So thoughts?

I will probably get it for PS4, if it is like ESO and can be done mostly solo.

Khajiit must hear more about it. As of right now it’s sounding a lot like a battle royale game. And why the hell did they include nukes?! That really irked me a bit.

Yeah, more info needed. If you can't play alone without others messing up your sh*t, then it will be a hard pass.

Totally.

This one wonders, if you can play it solo, how do they keep other players out of the game? Are there even Raiders and such or what?

I didn't see raiders. I'm hoping there are PVP zones that can be avoided.

Khajiit is not sure. It appears to be very “free range”. Ugggh, this is killing Khajiit! This one really wants to explore that area but not if he is constantly put into a deathmatch situation.

What is Fallout 76? ... You're not going to make me google are you?

Joke. Okay, here it is. An online survival version of the Fallout enterprise. Neato. I won't be getting it, but I look forward to all y'alls impressions.

Khajiit may not be getting it. Depends if he likes the info that comes out between now and Nov.14.

I have zero interest in another multiplayer title.

Yeah, Khajiit is reading reports that there are not any NPC’s in the game. WTF?!

Weird. No NPCs at all, huh? Are there NPCs in ES Online?

Does this game count as one of the two mysterious projects Beth has been working on? ... That's the rumor everyone was saying in the official forums: that Beth had two projects going on, and nobody knew what they were.

Renee, yes, there are NPCs in ESO just like in single player TES games. In fact, ESO works fine if you play solo - you actually don't have to interact with other players at all in ESO.

Looks like it. This 76 was the first of those and Starfield the second. After Starfield should be TES6. Assuming BGS doesn’t go off on another tangent.

And I back up what Acadian said, ESO is basically a main TES game with some really hyperactive NPCs, lol

Ah okay, so there are NPCs in ESO then. And Starfield IS a Bethesda project, as the rumors suggested. Cool. I haven't been in the official forums for a couple months now; this news must be all the rage over there.

And this must also mean ESVI is next.

Well this might be controversial to say, but I'm wondering if the lack of NPCs in FO76 is going to be some sort of experiment, so that gamers can take the place of these NPCs. In other words, think of Moira Brown, for instance. She's always there in her shop, selling and buying stuff. I wonder if that's the idea in 76--gamers will be able to take the "job" of shopkeepers and merchants and such.

Granted, that would be pretty odd. I mean, if this is true, it'd be almost like a regular job. The gamer would have to keep regular hours, or a bunch of other gamers would show up and there'd be nobody there to buy & sell from.

Oh there’s plenty of rage

I'm so excited I'm having dreams about it!!

Pew pew pew! Watch out for strangers!

Fallout 76 – Vault-Tec Presents: Let’s Work with Others! Multiplayer Video

Kaney, are you considering trying this game?

All depends on the amount of singleplayer ability. I definitely am not pre-oredering, and will likely wait several months after release if I do decided to buy it.
If it has the kind of solo exploration that ESO has, I will buy it.

Video is hilarious! hanks for posting.

Fallout 76 - "Vault-Tec Presents: A New American Dream"

Fallout 76 – Vault-Tec Presents: Atomics for Peace!

Check out the Quakecon panel for the game on YouTube I had similar doubts, but they answered a lot of questions regarding solo play/PvP etc and I am very hyped!

At the risk of double posting as the above post was me also before I got this account, I thought i would list a few features for the curious as I've been obsessively watching update videos haha.

Yes, there are no NPCs. Trading, RP etc will be done with other players. I'm hoping in the future there will be private servers so people can make RP servers.

Although raiders are gone, we have a new enemy called the scorched. These are almost feral ghouls who still have the capacity for firearm combat.

There are strict, and cool IMO, measures to tackle briefing from other players. This includes that players can't be killed by others until they reach level 5. And even then, you can't be killed easily unless you specifically engage in a PVP duel. The first few shots from a griefer does very minimal damage, giving players a chance to escape.

The only microtransactions will be cosmetics. And even then those same cosmetics can be earned in game.

Public servers will only have 24 people. So that in a world 4x the size of FO4 means a very rare chance of bumping into people.

I will edit this once I find out more

Khajiit is going to have to see the finished product before trying it. There’s too much about it that makes this one skeptical that he would enjoy it.

Wow, thanks for all the info, Ryan! Although I won't be getting 76, I'm extremely curious about this new direction Bethesda is taking. Everyone is probably criticizing Beth in the new forums (I haven't been there in awhile) but at least Beth is trying a bunch of new things for MMOs, not just repeating the same.

Pretty awesome reddit post by a B.E.T.A. player: https://old.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/9qwo...s_heres_what_i/

Has anybody here played it?

I am interested in it, but I won't be buying it anytime soon. I've got other games to go through first, and I am reluctant to spend that much money.

Servers are live!

Saw the live action tv spot for it the other day nd the whole time Khajiit was thinking “Ok, but where is the gameplay?”. Bethesda has gotten really bad about this. Live action is fine but we kinda need to see some gameplay too.

It's getting terrible reviews across the bank, both from the games review industry but also from individual gamers. Some of the biggest bits of criticism:

- Only way to communicate with (all!) other players is voice, which is enabled by default (!)
- No human NPCs at all, only other players
- Barely any story
- You can get shot in the back by some randomly spawning enemies while reading stuff on a computer console (????)
- Engine pretty dated, graphics bleh (compared to competition)
- PvP and other gameplay rather meh, all changes that were made were for the worst apparently

I was actually thinking about trying it out before reading reviews. Now I'm thinking I won't...

Lots of very disappointed folks out there. I always said it just looks like Ark: Survival Evolved without the dinosaurs (and thus inferior).

As expected it is apparently RIDDLED with bugs, including one bug that straight up deletes the game data from your system. Also some reports that people are unable to delete the beta from their system without first pre-ordering the game (say if their friend has given them a beta code).

Jim Sterling did a pretty good impressions video on it which highlights many of the issues. I'd recommend checking that out for those that are interested.

SMH
Khajiit is going to be very wary of BGS games from here on out. The days of this one preordering their games are over. It just baffles Khajiit that they thought this would be a good idea! If The Todd is such a great game director, how could he not see that this game was utter garbage?

It's certainly disappointing to hear the reviews. I wasn't planning on buying Fallout 76 anytime soon, but if I was before then I wouldn't be thinking about it now. I think Bethesda often gets more flak than it should and that some people like to be anti-Bethesda just because, but the sharp criticism certainly sounds justified this time. It's unlikely everybody is blowing this out of proportion if so many people are harping on it this harshly. This game sounds like it's even buggier than Daggerfall, and if that is the case...yikes.

This makes me disappointed in Bethesda. They are better than this.



It seems like the biggest issue was how they rushed this. I know they said they have been working on this since pretty much Fallout 4's release, but if it is this unstable of a game then it has to have been rushed (game mechanics aside).

I can appreciate them taking a risk on an idea that is so different from what they have done before, and seems to be quite different from what anybody else has tried. But there is no excuse for having so many bugs and so much instability.

Khajiit can appreciate them taking a risk on a good idea, but a good idea this game is not. Think about it. No NPCs, next to no story, and a multiplayer with so many restrictions on how you can interact with other players that it practically doesn’t matter (Khajiit would want to be a Raider but with the griefing countermeasures, this isn’t possible). What were they thinking? The lack of care is just astounding.

Next Bethesda will announce that TES VI will be a phone game...

Well there is Blades...

Yeah, this sounds really bad. Perhaps for ES I do not mind the idea but for Fallout, no thanks.

The game should always just be about SP. That is a true Fallout to me. A lone, bleak wasteland stretches out before you, civilization has collapsed and you are down to a few remaining bullets. If Beth really wanted us to play in a group then gives us a proper faction system and allow us to join the raiders/slavers and play an evil character instead.

I would have preferred to have a Fallout game made by Obsidian in this 2-3 year period. But that is wishful thinking...

You haven't been to the new forums for awhile, eh? My gosh it is constant demands for multiplayer. Every day every hour. Doesn't surprise me they went this route. And it's not just for Fallout, it's for ALL Bethesda games. There are people demanding Beth remaster Daggerfall, and then make it into an MMO. :facepalm:

That being said, I'm off to visit the new forums now! Curiosity is piquing, and all that.

I read this in the comments at ign-

58 hours in and I'm ready to stop playing.

Fallout 3 removed the Turn-Based Combat.
Fallout: New Vegas removed Bethesda's Relevancy as a development team.
Fallout 4 removed Roleplaying.
Fallout 76 removed Story and NPCs.

...can't wait to see what they remove next.

I guess that says everything.

"Fallout 4 removed roleplaying" ???.... hmm...

Well, I've done a lot of reading over in the new forums, and it's not all bad, though it does seem worse than usual. Many people like the game as-is though. Can somebody post an example of a review they've read which outlines why it's so horrible?

Please don't take this as me attacking you (I don't know how much you agree with that commenter anyway), but I loathe the argument that Fallout 4 is not a roleplaying game. It's the same that many people say about Skyrim, or Oblivion, or even Morrowind if you dig deep enough. It is absolutely a roleplaying game. If you want to argue that it isn't what an RPG should be or that it doesn't do RPG mechanics as well as other games, that's one thing. But I find the vast majority of the time that arguments about RPGs not actually being RPGs are because people don't like the game in the first place.

Roleplaying is such a pliable term, you know? Personally, I could roleplay blocks of wood if I got in the mood!

Because to me, this term == playing a role. But not just any role, it's playing a role I want to play, with the character(s) I want to be with. That is how I define it, I know everyone is different..I want to design my own character, and have a compelling world for him or her to be in. That is the focus of the game, not the action, not the quests, not the stats or numbers.

One could argue "well you play a role in Tomb Raider as Lara Croft, by definition, Tomb Raider is therefore an RPG," and I would say "no" to this. Because in Tomb Raider, the focus of the game is on the action, the flips, the twirls, and all the tings Lara does. If I wanted Lara to be (let's say) a flower picker, who does nothing but collect ingredients (my idea, not the devs) if I want to play a role as a flower-picker in Tomb Raider, this is not the focus of the game.

But in any Bethesda game I've played so far, I can create a flower-picker if I want (and I have), who does not get involved in combat or pre-written quests.

Back in my tabletop days, for me this was the 1980s, there were two main groups of people when it came to roleplaying games. Some preferred painted figureines (my group did). Obviously, gaming with a bunch of more-evolved chess pieces takes a lot of imagination. You can't move these pieces around, roll dice, and then not imagine what just happened, if a troll ambushed your party or if you ambushed the troll or whatever. That's where the term roleplaying comes in, I suppose.

The other main group of people would not usually use figures, instead they'd ACT out their parts. They'd sit around a table and speak in these silly accents, trying to sound British or whatever. Me and a friend tried gaming with this group one time, and once was enough!

But my point is even back then, I remember hearing one group accusing the other of "not truly roleplaying." So when we hear of FO4 not being an RPG, or Oblivion, or even Morrowind, this sort of argument is not new.

Thank you. Time for some eggnog.

I absolutely agree with your main point, and FO4 is absolutely a role playing game, but I think the main issues that RPers had with the game was the first portion in which your character is told that they're married and have a child - immediately setting your character into a specific slot. Compared to previous Bethesda games where your characters aren't given pre-existing backstories of too much consequence, FO3 says you have a father and NV says you're a courier - much easier to work into RP.

Also having a voiced character.

Khajiit believes an alternate start mod is a *must* for Fallout4. You can work with the story BGS set up for you, but it is definitely the most restrictive story they’ve ever put into a game.

Although FO4 forces a certain backstory upon you, it's the same in both FO3 and New Vegas. And it was the same in original Fallout(s). In FO3 you lived in a fixed place, and have fixed parents, etc. In New Vegas you're a courier and some of your past deeds (Lonesome Road) are forced upon you, also during some dialogues you have an option to reveal some of your past (like when talking to the Drifter between the 188 and Novac, etc). So I don't think that FO4 does it any differently, except that they added a voice character this time. Compared to New Vegas, though, they made a dialogue system much more "poor", considering how many options to answer you have in New Vegas. But nonetheless, I don't find FO4 any less of a RPG than previous Fallout(s).

The key thing about Bethesda games and Fallouts is that yes they start off with a fixed beginning. Even in Morrowind we start as a prisoner, for instance. Arena does the same. And Daggerfall. Daggerfall is supposed to be the pinnacle of roleplaying videogames, yet we start with a fixed beginning, branded as a prisoner, forced into the role as a prisoner.

But the main thing Beth does is it doesn't force us to stay on those beginning paths. I know well, because before I discovered Oblivion I played a lot of games in which I had no other options at all, but to stay on whatever path the devs laid out for me.