Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic

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jawa4
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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa4 » Fri Feb 28, 2020 9:06 am

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The upcoming Wastelanders update will bring conversation to the Wasteland!


FLEX YOUR SOCIAL SKILLS IN WASTELANDERS

For the last year, you’ve been working to rebuild America and beat back the Scorched plague with very limited human contact. Now, the time has come to brush up on your Charisma. People are about to return to Appalachia in droves, and you’re going to need to rely on your conversational prowess if you want to get to know your new neighbors.

Whether you want to learn about what life is like outside of Appalachia, warn others about the dangers you’ve encountered since you left the Vault, or just make a few new friends, the dialogue system coming with the Wastelanders update is going to play a crucial role as you navigate this next chapter in your survival story.

CHOOSE YOUR WORDS WISELY

Whenever you’re chatting up your favorite Ally, a Faction leader, or one of the many other characters you will meet during your adventures, you will be able to choose from a variety of response options. The words you employ during your conversations with others can, at times, be even more powerful than your favorite weapons. The decisions you make may help you forge alliances, find an alternate way to get something done, or even have an impact on your reputation with the Settlers or the Raiders.

The new faces in town aren’t the only ones who are interested in having discussions with you. We’ve also revisited some of our existing NPCs, like Rose, MODUS, and others to outfit them with dialogue. While the quests they send you on will be the same as they are in the base game, we hope that your interactions with them along the way will feel more flavorful and fun than before.

Don’t forget, as a Vault Dweller, you’re S.P.E.C.I.A.L.! Depending on how you’ve allocated points into your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes, you will sometimes find you can pull off conversational feats that others cannot. For example, , you may be able to convince someone to give you a weapon, find solutions to problems more quickly, or know just what to say to ease tensions during a tough moment.

TAKE CONTROL OF THE CONVERSATION

As part of the dialogue system, we’ve also added a few controls that can help you make the most out of your conversations with other characters. You can keep track of everything that’s said using the new History option at the bottom of the screen. This can be toggled on or off to show up to eight rows of dialogue subtitles at any given time. If you’re replaying a conversation, or just want to get to your responses more quickly, you can Skip each of an NPC’s individual lines to help speed things along. Finally, you can adjust the camera angle during your conversations whenever you’d like to get a better view of the person you’re speaking with.



Quick heads-up on a couple of things taking place this weekend:

> It's Double XP time! Make twice the progress from now through until 17:00 (UK) on Monday.

> The Bethesda Game Days event is underway and at 19:00 (UK) tonight there will be a live discussion and play of the upcoming Wastelanders update. Watch via Twitch by clicking here.

jawa4
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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa4 » Fri Feb 28, 2020 1:07 pm

jawa4 wrote:...Meanwhile, I've just moved again - my camp is at a spot where I can collect both water and junk. Still building at the mo', but will post a screen or two when it is complete.


twitter.com/jawafour/status/1233375471880024065



I was so pleased with how this build turned out; it's efficient, cosy and even has a room for guests to stay :D .

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OrangeRKN
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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by OrangeRKN » Fri Feb 28, 2020 1:45 pm

Nice build jawa! I like the patios/balconies.

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa4 » Fri Feb 28, 2020 5:40 pm

OrangeRKN wrote:Nice build jawa! I like the patios/balconies.

Thanks, man... you're welcome to stay in the guest room the next time you're in Appalachia :-) .

I've now squeezed a fourth vending machine onto the front veranda. Trying to get some sales!

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa4 » Fri Feb 28, 2020 6:56 pm

jawa4 wrote:> The Bethesda Game Days event is underway and at 19:00 (UK) tonight there will be a live discussion and play of the upcoming Wastelanders update. Watch via Twitch by clicking here.

The show is going live in five!

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa4 » Fri Feb 28, 2020 7:37 pm

jawa4 wrote:...The show is going live in five!

Oh boy... that was great!

There are some big changes coming with the Wastelanders update. New people, new quests, new areas, redeveloped areas... this is change I'd say is on a par with the huge changes made to No Man's Sky. I think the changes will attract players who enjoyed Fallouts 3 and 4 but were perhaps put off by the multiplayer-styed gameplay that was in 76 at launch. The proof will be in the play, but it seems that the game will bring something to people looking for the benefits from a single player experience, whilst also offering more to do in team-up challenges as well.

It's pretty exciting! Will post the video and the new roadmap once it's available.

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa4 » Sat Feb 29, 2020 11:14 pm

jawa4 wrote:...There are some big changes coming with the Wastelanders update... Will post the video and the new roadmap once it's available.

Here it is!



Meanwhile, I spent quite a lot of time moving and rebuilding my camp in a new location today. I tried out an Acid resource extraction point for the first time and... well, although it was cool to try something different, I'm just not so happy with the area and my camp.

So tomorrow I'm gonna start afresh back at a riverside location :fp: :lol: .

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa4 » Thu Mar 26, 2020 8:07 pm

jawa4 wrote:...There are some big changes coming with the Wastelanders update...

The Wastelanders update has been delayed due to the Bethesda team's processes being impacted by the coronavirus. The good news, though, is that it is planned to arrive just one week later than scheduled, with 14 April being the new launch date!

Bethesda wrote:
WASTELANDERS RELEASE UPDATE

Friends,

Like others around the world, we’re dealing with the critical situation that’s currently affecting so many of us. For the safety of everyone, we have transitioned to remote work, and are limiting our in-person interactions.

This has obviously changed the way we work, but rest assured that critical services for all our live games are fully operating.

However, this has affected our ability to do the final testing we need for Wastelanders and we must move the release date a week, from April 7 to April 14. We’ve done everything we can to minimize the delay and can’t wait for everyone to play. A special thanks to all our Private Test Server players for all your help.

We know this is a stressful time, and we can’t thank you enough for all the support you’ve given each other and us. We’re humbled to have such an incredible community that has stuck with us through ups and downs. It means the world to us, especially in times like this.

Stay safe, and thanks again,

Bethesda Game Studios

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Saint of Killers
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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by Saint of Killers » Wed Apr 22, 2020 12:01 pm

This is pretty brilliant:

twitter.com/eurogamer/status/1252914793251508225



:lol:

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Parksey
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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by Parksey » Tue May 19, 2020 4:17 am

Bit of a bump, but I played the free trial for this on Sunday and Monday.

And.. it's not bad. I'm not sure how much they've bolted it up, and it's now got the Wastelanders stuff in, but it basically feels like a Fallout game. Your enjoyment and mileage of it will depend on how much you love the Bethesda/Fallout formula, which has basically been unchanged for nigh on 20 years.

If you've played Fallout 3, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 4 and want something similar, you could do worse than pick this up.

So the good points:

*The world is pretty good. I think it's quite solid for a MMO visually when you only consider the environment and Appalachia is an interesting place to explore. I haven't put much time into F4 but I personally find it more interesting than the Capital Wasteland, which was always a bit turgid and dull, bar the ruined capital.
*Quests are more involved than usual MMO stuff, at least the Wastelanders content is, anyway. My problem with ESO is that I usually barely registered the story behind the quest and the character dialogue, as it is just usually go to a place and do X activity X times. F76 still has those, but the window dressing does add to it a little more. Again, the environment being interesting helps.
*Crafting is something I can see people enjoying. The base stuff could be pretty engrossing, though I didn't find myself drawn to it during the trial, but that's just my playstyle.
*It's not *that* buggy anymore. Seems like they've cleaned a lot of stuff up, so it's no better or worse than Bethesda's usual games. Faint praise, I know, but I didn't really see anything bar one or two frozen enemies in two days.

And now the bad:

*Heavy focus on crafting, hoarding and building. As I said, this wasn't really for me, but it's a personal thing - some people will like the survival elements, the thirst and hunger meters, the scrounging for cans and scrap. It might get better after the early game, but it was often a bit of a struggle. Was quite often short on ammo and over-encumbered.
*The combat. Fallout 4's combat is meant to be slow paced and tweaked with the VATS system for easier aiming. VATs is a bit stupid in real time and unweidly, as is shooting in general. Tied with better shooting mechanics would make gun combat less or a chore. Doesn't really suit the MMO concept.
*Inventory management is a pain. The single player Fallout menus shouldn't have been copied wholesale. Unsuited to an MMO, slow and unweidly.
*Frame rate wasnt always the smoothest. Felt a bit jerky at times.

Overall, the game has convinced me that a Fallout MMO could work. However, it's also convinced me that they needed to build it from the ground up, not bolt it on the F4 engine. Most of my problems with the game come from it being an MMO concept on a slower, single player RPG. And an aging engine at that. The Fallout engine still has good points (the game world being the main one), but it was never meant to be wedded to the more frantic, fast pace of an MMO.

Overall, it sort of scratched an itch during this confinement period - a big, vast game with plenty to do and RPG elements.

But there's a problem. I was peer pressured by friends when drunk into buying F4 on launch, for £50, when I was only a bit of the way throug New Vegas. I begged them to stop, I begged them. I said I'd get round to 4 eventually but they plied me with booze. So I bought it. I've played it for 3 hours.

F76 seems to have had a slight price raise, so it's now in a sale at £25. Had it been a tenner I would have likely plumped for it, but I think going back to F4 will satisfy my cravings for the time being (I'm also playing Warzone and ESO for the online stuff). I did find 76 enjoyable this weekend, but if you've got 4 unplayed like I have, I do wonder if it's worth picking 76 up ahead of that.

But later on in the year, if it drops in price, I'd be tempted to pick it up.

Bethesda have definitely improved it, and I would say it's definitely not a bad game now. Jim Sterling described it as "a slightly worse F4, but now a Fallout game" and I'd probably agree with that. It's definitely got something to offer, if you've really enjoyed Bethesda games in the past, and it's still in the process of updates and fixes that may improve it further. Though there's always going to be a bit of a glass ceiling for it, as Bethesda games tend to have the same inherent flaws nowadays.

There's also a moral argument that a game shouldn't launch at full price and require over 18 months of fixes to get into a decent shape. I think the updates have so far been free, but that's just not fair on the consumer. It's not uncommon for games of 76's ilk too, and rushing these live service games out and relying on goodwill and patches later is not on.

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa » Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:07 pm

Over the past year my most of my time spent gaming has been on Fallout 76. Probably not a huge shock for most of you folks but, yeah, I have been enjoying it. I've clocked up around 730 hours, with the vast majority of that time spent on exploring (wandering about) and building CAMPs (my favourite part!).

But, for the past couple of weeks, I haven't played at all. The last patch included an element called "One Wasteland" and this introduced enemy level scaling across the entire gameworld. Cutting to the chase... IMHO, a pile of pony! The changes made mean that nearly all enemies scale up to at least your level and this has the effect of making the gameplay loop - particularly for lower level players whom won't have great weapons or tons of resources - become a chore rather than being fun.

This afternoon another update is being made and it will include some "tuning" for some of the enemies. I'm so hoping that at least the main starting area (the Forest zone) will be less of a grind and more like the old style. I would like to continue playing the game... we'll see!

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by Jenuall » Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:08 pm

Whoa, a wild Jawa appears!

That does sound like a bit of a bad change they have introduced there, I guess it is trying to incentivise people to either play more or pay more to stay ahead of the curve?

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by Victor Mildew » Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:10 pm

:toot: :toot: :toot: :toot: :toot:

piss off n00b

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by OrangeRKN » Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:16 pm

The online nature of it meant 76 always had some oddities in enemy scaling (as other players in the area could cause enemy spawns) but in general the scaling was pretty good and I thought better than previous Bethesda games precisely because it wasn't aggressively scaled to the player and areas had actual set level brackets. I don't play it anymore but I can understand why that wouldn't be great jawa!

It sounds like the general endgame content creep that seems to infect all live service online games, which is more annoying for F76 because you can mostly play it like a singleplayer game.

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa » Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:26 pm

Jenuall wrote:...That does sound like a bit of a bad change they have introduced there, I guess it is trying to incentivise people to either play more or pay more to stay ahead of the curve?

Hey, Jenual, yeah - I think the change came about from a positive thought (lets open up all the zones so that they can be challenging to everyone!) but one impact is that the game now feels more focused to meet the desires of higher-level players and it has became a slog for lower level players. I liked the Forest (starting) zone because you could build CAMPs and explore with only lower-level enemies around... and now it is a constant grind. I'm gonna be downloading the update later and trying it out to see if things have been modified a bit!

Victor Mildew wrote:piss off n00b

:lol: .

OrangeRKN wrote:The online nature of it meant 76 always had some oddities in enemy scaling (as other players in the area could cause enemy spawns) but in general the scaling was pretty good and I thought better than previous Bethesda games precisely because it wasn't aggressively scaled to the player and areas had actual set level brackets. I don't play it anymore but I can understand why that wouldn't be great jawa!

It sounds like the general endgame content creep that seems to infect all live service online games, which is more annoying for F76 because you can mostly play it like a singleplayer game.

Orange, that's right - the scaling was pretty decent as it was, in so far as you knew that different zones would have certain enemy level ranges. I knew that I could wander over to, say, the Ash Heap for tougher challenges whilst I could also stay and do my "Animal Crossing: Fallout Edition" CAMP building in the Forest area. Now when you wander in the Forest, as a level 43 player (but with lousy weaponry) I could (and have) come across groups of four Feral Ghouls all at the same level 43. I then spend loads of bullets on duffing 'em up and have to search for materials to make more bullets. I can see the desire for otehr areas to be meaner and tougher, but not the (previously) lower level area. Ah well, we'll see if the enew update helps!

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by Green Gecko » Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:30 pm

I knew this was jawa posting in a fallout 76 thread. Welcome back and glad you are still enjoying the game, even with its current, er, "patch pains", to coin a phrase.

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa » Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:33 pm

Green Gecko wrote:I knew this was jawa posting in a fallout 76 thread. Welcome back and glad you are still enjoying the game, even with its current, er, "patch pains", to coin a phrase.

Hey, Gecko, thank you! Yeah, still being playing it a lot. Err, except for the past few weeks; hopefully will be again later!

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by Jenuall » Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:34 pm

This is on Game Pass now isn't it? I always intended to give it a go at some point out of sheer curiosity if nothing else!

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by jawa » Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:37 pm

Jenuall wrote:This is on Game Pass now isn't it? I always intended to give it a go at some point out of sheer curiosity if nothing else!

I believe it is on the Xbox Game Pass, Jenuall. Probably the best way to test it out, with little outlay. It's cack at the moment, though ;-) .

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PostRe: Fallout 76 is the score it wishes it had on metacritic
by Errkal » Tue Sep 29, 2020 2:48 pm

Jenuall wrote:This is on Game Pass now isn't it? I always intended to give it a go at some point out of sheer curiosity if nothing else!


For Xbox, sadly not on PC by the looks (unless the app is being odd)


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