Could Fallout 76 Be In Trouble?

Nicholas our resident Bethesda fan, dives in and explains why he thinks Fallout 76 might be in trouble when it launches November 14th.

[goodwin]

Only 'might'? Not 'is'?

[Cmv38]

I love fallout. Was rather excited when I heard about this. News that has come out since has curbed my excitement. I tried the beta and some it has potential, but its not fun.

[--bienio--]

I hope so.

[FPS_D3TH]

This game will at the very least be a total mess on PC with the bugs and loopholes that still exist.

[UnHoly_One]

I love Fallout, but I cancelled my pre-order based 100% on the hunger and thirst meters that completely dominate the gameplay.

My entire first few hours was solely based around eating and drinking, and then using Radaway to get rid of all the radiation I got from eating and drinking so much.

There is barely any time to do anything else but eat/drink, or look for food so that you can eat/drink some more.

It's ridiculous how fast those meters go.

Even if the rest of the game was amazing it would be ruined by the hunger and thirst.

[MatrixxGT]

This is exactly how I feel.

[fiveby9]

Relatively to other FO games, it's DOA. Nobody will be playing this in 12 months.

[Interloper]

I'm sorry, but I spent way more time exploring and looting than I did being concerned with the water/food survival aspect. It took third base for me and only even noticed it when I was returning to my C.A.M.P to drop off junk. If you honestly search and scavenge every possible thing, I think you'll find the food/drink management rather not to bad. :)

[Cmv38]

So you have to play a certain way to deal with a game mechanic? Nah.

Plus I scavenge everything and I too felt overburdened by the stupid mechanic.

[UnHoly_One]

I was exploring and looting everything.

It just felt like the only point of doing that was to keep those stupid meters filled.

[Elwenil]

I kind of have to agree. It's a bunch of annoying things like the hunger and thirst that kill this game. Related to the hunger and thirst is the fact that most chems also increase the rate your hunger and thirst meters drain. It seemed like damn near everything sped those meters up. In addition, the fact that any player can kill you at any time is adds and interesting level of stress to the game, but the fact that so many people want to opt out of it and can't is more than a little stupid. Sure, you can go into "pacifist mode" but all that does is prevent you from harming another player and inadvertently starting a PvP match. Any player can kill you and the only options you have are fight back or leave the server. You can't run, since they will just chase after you and you can't just go about your business since eventually they will kill you.

In my opinion, the map showing where everyone is, is dumb and pointless. Every time I play, I immediately go and click on every player and select "Block For This Session". They disappear from my map, and I disappear from theirs. It makes running into another player much more random and and bit unexpected. Unfortunately Bethesda didn't have the intelligence to make it a feature to block everyone so I have to constantly check my map and block new players as they log onto the server.

Overall Fallout 76 has some great things about it and is pretty interesting to play. I will say it's not nearly as fun playing solo, but at the same time since everyone has their own CAMP, there isn't really any way to help each other out more than just killing enemies. You can't all team up and have a "Clan CAMP" and everyone contribute, it's everyone for themselves for loot and building their CAMP. A big missed opportunity there, in my opinion. But it is one of so many and I honestly do think that Fallout 76 will fail miserably. It may get better over time with more work as so many ambitious multiplayer games have, but at launch it is probably going to be a nightmare of conflicting ideas and conflicting play-styles. I am going to play the last run of the BETA today, but I am pretty much convinced at this point to cancel my preorder and wait for it to drop to about $30. Right now Fallout 76 is, to me, about like ARK: Survival Evolved was when it released. It's a love it or hate it type of thing that is more fun with friends, but 90% of your friends will hate it and you may be stuck playing solo which means many missions will be very difficult (I'm looking at you AVR Medical building and your horde of Scorched inside the front door) and things like a Scorchbeast are best avoided until you finally get powerful enough to deal with them solo. Just my .02

[KillZallthebeast]

Hey guy's let's make an online only version of a game where the vast majority love playing alone, and also make it nearly impossible to use mods on pc

[MIDNIITE_Z3RO]

I commend studios on trying new things, but when they try this online only, MP type stuff, I never even look at that studio's work again, unfortunately. Fallout has been a great series, but stuff like this just irritates me. I'm surprised CoD4 is having the success that it's having, but I have watched a few streams of it and it actually does look like fun, but not something I could see myself dumping months of time into it.

[-T9X-69-]

At face value, I could see that. But if you look at the bigger picture, how many other developers (Bethesda Games Studio, not Bethesda the publisher) have been relevant and around as long as they have without dipping into the online world? BGS has never made an online game. Some of the biggest devs like ND, R*, Bioware (at one point), all dipped into multiplayer with their franchises. People like yourself say when devs do this you never look back, but look how long it took for them? Nearly 20 years and over half of that had online gaming. Instead we've only been given massive single player titles. People slam them saying they want to "milk" microtransaction when they're only selling skins, but for nearly 2 decades they've never once made an online focus or only game to even make that attempt. Just my opinion though.

To be clear. I'm strictly speaking on them taking a main franchise that was SP only and turning it into a MP game. That has nothing to do or excuses any of the bugs or issues people are personally having with Fallout 76. That's a completely different conversation.

[parris]

Oh, don't worry there will be mods... paid mods.

[King_Noctis]

This game is not even necessary. If this was Rockstar, then Fallout 4 would already have an online mode like this one.

[Interloper]

I've loved every minute I've played and given the right support, I could see myself playing this for a good year or two. :D

[LiViNgLeGaCY]

God I hope so.

[Psychotica]

I have no interest in this at all, let me know when the single player only Fallout 5 is out..

[parris]

I'd be fine watching it crash and burn. But the reality is if even a handful of dummies buy MT's it'll generate revenue, online games like this are harder to kill than roaches.

[Profchaos]

PC beta has shown that the game isn't ready and actually put users security in jeopardy by broadcasting all players ips via the client. Not to mention crashes, frame rate issues and lots of YouTube videos about how broken it is universally on the 1080 ti

[BuildTheWall]

I hope this game is a complete failure.

[HylianMigz]

i completely forgot the release date if thats any indication

[_LarZen_]

Seeing the reaction from people not going in super negative to a multiplayer game I'm seeing allot of positive reactions. Mine included as I think it has potential.

[Dragonscale]

The potential for mt's in this is vast. Everything from stimpacks to ammo, meds etc etc not to mention the cosmetics. No thanks bethesda.