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

[Bliblablubb]

Backpack Updates: Changing your Backpack’s appearance is now as simple as applying a skin, and you can now apply them to Small Backpacks, too!

Players who own the Liberty Prime Power Armor can now craft the silent version of the helmet at a Power Armor Station.

Finally. Took them only, what, almost a year to do it? It was always a mystery to me why Beth sells backpack skins you can only apply to the turdpole version nobody wants to grind for.
The silent liburteh prime is nice too.
Except it's not the helmet but the chest piece that creates the soundfiles. So, players are supposed to wear a helmet that overides the chest's script I guess? Whatever, it just works!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

you can only apply to the turdpole version nobody wants to grind for.

I proudly wear my tadpole backpack, thank you very much.
Ever upwards!

 

[Bliblablubb]

On the first char, yes.
But if you have to grind all of that again on your additional pylon #4 to use the new skin you just bought... nah, I'll pass.
You can only show off one after all. 'dexi hauls at least 4 different backpacks around, because... you need to switch outfits occasional and you gotta have a matching backpack for that outfit amirite? DON'T JUDGE ME, THEY WERE ON SALE!

But jokes aside I meant it from a business perspective. Being able to apply them to the normal one would make people buy more skins, knowing they do not have to invest dozens of hours before being able to. Or making the vault tec skin would be even better, instead of just constantly teasing it everywhere. Because Beth is seriously the WORST company when it comes to business models. Stuff people want is not offered, like enclave or the VT backpack. The skin for it is in the game since day one FFS. They always do it wrong, with no real business sense, hamfisted, no cleverness... or simply take all the flak ("horse armor") and quickly retreat in fear, while others like EA have no shame and make yuge moneys with microtransactions...

 

[Bliblablubb]

"Blood Eagles: No longer sometimes drop weapons that have Nuclear Winter mods as loot."
Aw. Laser weapons were finally useful for almost a month. F.

"Exploit: Addressed an Ammo exploit for weapons that use Fusion Cores as ammo."
Aww.

"Exploit: Addressed an exploit that could allow players to complete the Vital Equipment daily quest multiple times per day."
Awwww.

"Headwear: The Free Radicals Mask is no longer a legendary item, which is now consistent with all other headwear."
Awwwwww.

"Exploit: Addressed a reputation exploit affecting a conversation with Meg."
Awwwwwww come on! No fun allowed...

Wait... but they did not fix Fatsy Rocksy's exploit? Heh amateurs.

 

[Cirtdear]

Maybe you'll think of playing... when you.. are offline. Maybe.. the server maintenance.. you are waiting to be done.. will prove untrue. Then what will you do?
Maybe... you'll sit and decide thinking... its return is still near. Then maybe you'll refresh the page one last time. And maybe it'll say some more maintenance may be needed again.


Almost seven-- in the day, Server Outages, Worthless Steam-Play, Life is older, Older than the creation engine, Younger than the free trial week blowing by like an atomic detonation, Todd Howard, take me home, to bethesda, seven PM, Todd Howard, Take me home, to bethesda.

 

[Cirtdear]

Men I have a proposal. Earlier today I announced I was quiting FO76. In my time off since then I've devised an easy solution to my troubles.


Introduction: If you wait-in, patrol, or defend an area why doesn't your presence guarantee any benefit?

Solution: Area Influence Points. Earn points toward a specific area by being there and either waiting, patroling, or defending it.
With enough points you can unlock one of many rewards all limited to that area.

-Increased private storage by 2 LBS at a time, up to 50 LBS max. This is permanent but limited to the area.
-PvE buff. Resistances.
-PvP buff. Stealth or Armor.
-Neutral buff. Run speed, jump height.
-Get a simple drink/food in the variety local to that area.
-Boost a SPECIAL slot point and get a free perk card which remains active until you leave the area.
-Purchase vertibird fuel. After enough fuel you can travel by vertibird and be airdropped anywhere on the map. More fuel for farther distances from area of origin.
-Trigger a Special Encounter. Most expensive to save up for but you get a very exotic event which will show up local to your area.

The intended side effect of this system is you now have additional reasons to stay, return, and leave every area on the map.

While each bonus should be purchaseable regardless of location, their effects should be randomized.
Such as which SPECIAL slot point can be boosted and what free card(s) it provides you.
The buffs may want to be randomly chosen as well.

But I encourage each areas unique bonus effects to be re-chosen by the end of a real day or definitely by the end of a real week.

In order to spend the points there will need to be a terminal or like device, placed in each area. I recommend inside a sewer manhole or whatever.

Area Influence Points do not expire. But once spent you are stuck with the decision until you can earn more.

Summary: By incentivizing three behaviors: going, staying, and returning all over the map differently, we give players a lot more to think about when inbetween areas or during downtime.

 

[Risewild]

Introduction: If you wait-in, patrol, or defend an area why doesn't your presence guarantee any benefit?

Knowing Bethesda... They would start selling, in their Atom Store, dummies for 1500 Atoms or something stupid, that can be placed in those areas and would count as the player being there with his character.

 

[Dexter]

I wonder what in particular I said that's so incredibly confusing or unbelievable?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

https://fallout.bethesda.net/en/art...5SMYr/fallout-76-inside-the-vault-may-updates

Fallout 76: Inside the Vault - May Updates
This week, we’re making a clarification about how 76 Seasons will work. We’ve also got reminders for you about the first Hunt for the Treasure Hunter event, which begins today, and the return of Fasnacht Parade, which starts Monday.

76 Seasons are for Everyone

Following our preview of 76 Seasons in last week’s Inside the Vault, we’ve seen questions and concerns from the community about what it will cost to take part in Seasons after the first one. We’d like to clarify that participation in Fallout Seasons will be free for all of our players, and we apologize for any confusion. Additionally, everyone is going to gain access to each new Season as soon as it begins, and all players will follow the same progress and reward track. You will have the option to purchase individual ranks for Atoms in the order they appear, but not during the first two weeks of a Season.

That said, we are looking into potentially adding some bonus rewards at certain Ranks for Fallout 1st members—but not for Season 1. We are currently focused on getting this system implemented and seeing your feedback on Seasons first before we include any extra rewards.

Finally, the Seasons system will not be available for play testing in our upcoming iteration of the PTS for Update 20. There are technical reasons for this, which include the fact that the Atomic Shop is not available in the PTS. While we would love to hear your early impressions of Seasons in the PTS, we are looking forward to reading your thoughts once you’ve had the chance to try out the new system after Update 20 arrives.

Hunt Down Treasure Hunter Mole Miners

For the next few days, it’s Open Season on “Treasure Hunter” Mole Miners, who have been observed surfacing in the Ash Heap to scour the area for riches. Head there to search for these special Mole Miners, and then take them down to claim their loot for yourself by picking up and opening the Mole Miner Pails they drop.

During the event, Vendor bots around Appalachia will also sell you Empty Pails for Caps. Use them at a Tinker’s Workbench to craft your own Mole Miner Pails that are full of loot. You can then trade them to others, or keep for them for yourself.

After a few days, the Mole Miners will realize you’ve caught on to their activities in the Ash Heap, and they’ll put their hoarding on hold. However, you can bet they’ll venture out again in the future to resume their operations in another region of Appalachia. There are plenty of rewards up for grabs this weekend, and you can get additional event info in the Update 19 Patch Notes on Fallout.com.

Hunt for the Treasure Hunter details:

• Region: Ash Heap
• Event Start: 12:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, May 21
• Event End: 12:00 p.m. ET on Monday, May 25

Join the Fasnacht Parade on Monday

In case you missed it in the Update 19 Patch Notes, the Fasnacht Parade Seasonal Event is returning to Helvetia starting on Monday, May 25!

The event itself will work just as it did previously: The Protectrons in Helvetia need your help with a variety of activities to prepare for the annual Fasnacht celebration and parade. If you aid them before the timer runs out, the bots will gather together and begin their festive march around town. Defend them from any party crashers along the parade route, and you’ll be rewarded with some loot. The more bots that survive the parade, the better your chances at rare loot, including Fasnacht Masks.

The community enjoyed this event quite a bit last year, and so we’re excited to bring it back again. We’ve implemented a number of bug fixes since last time, made some balance tweaks for the bots, and significantly increased the drop rates for rare Fasnacht Masks. There are also several new Masks up for grabs, so make sure to join in the festivities and claim some rewards next week.

Fasnacht Parade details:

• Event Start: 1:00 p.m. ET on Monday, May 25*
• Event End: 12:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday, June 2

Please note: Decorations will appear in Helvetia starting at 12:00 p.m. ET on May 25, and the first run of the event will begin an hour later. It will start up again every hour after that.

Thanks for joining us for another Inside the Vault. We hope you’re enjoying customizing your Allies as much as we are after Update 19. Until next time, we’ll see you in Appalachia!

Their site has nice typesetting.

 

[commie]

God, doesn't this ever end????? And we still have Anthem relaunch/reboot/re-shit to wait for......

 

[Gregz]

I don't care about all that, fix the goddamn player vending machines already.

 

[Bliblablubb]

I don't care about all that, fix the goddamn player vending machines already.

As sad as it is from a player perspective, I am laughing my ass off at this point. It has become a groundhog day running gag by now.

People post videos of taking other peoples shit for free.
Beth takes vendors down.
Beth "fixes" vendors, forgot aboot punch bowls. People post videos of drinking 3 star legendaries out of other people's stash.
Beth takes vendors down.
Beth "fixes" vendors, 10 mins later people post videos of taking other people's shit for free.
Beth takes vendors down.
Beth "fixes" vendors, now people take shit out of other's display cases again.
Beth takes vendors down.

That, and many other unfixed bugs, convinced me that Todd has layed off all the real coders, and now the guy who makes cash shop items is supposed to fix everything.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I don't care about all that, fix the goddamn player vending machines already.

As sad as it is from a player perspective, I am laughing my ass off at this point. It has become a groundhog day running gag by now.

People post videos of taking other peoples shit for free.
Beth takes vendors down.
Beth "fixes" vendors, forgot aboot punch bowls. People post videos of drinking 3 star legendaries out of other people's stash.
Beth takes vendors down.
Beth "fixes" vendors, 10 mins later people post videos of taking other people's shit for free.
Beth takes vendors down.
Beth "fixes" vendors, now people take shit out of other's display cases again.
Beth takes vendors down.

That, and many other unfixed bugs, convinced me that Todd has layed off all the real coders, and now the guy who makes cash shop items is supposed to fix everything.

Disagree, it's just a result of attempting to turn a singleplayer game engine into a multiplayer one.
None of this stuff matters in a singleplayer game, devs don't care about exploits as long as it's not something that directly impacts gameplay and extremely easy to trigger. There is nothing like input validation from the client in a singleplayer game, etc., The engine simply wasn't built nor continually developed for this purpose, the attack surface is massive. They could have some of the most skilled programmers in the industry and new exploits would regularly be found. Serious MMOs do have some of the best network/security programmers available, and exploits still are regularly found in them.

Essentially, FO76 would have been better as a non-persistent game with online capabilities.

 

[AW8]

So I played this for a few more hours during the free weekend. When trying to give my character the biggest eyes Appalachia's ever seen (to match the nose and ears), the camera spazzed out and got locked behind my character.

The first thing in the game being bugged is not a good sign.

However, I did notice much better performance than last summer. I no longer had any random one second freezes, and I was never disconnected either. I could even fast travel to a friend without it crashing. Major incline!!!!!

I didn't play much, but I did complete one of the early quests where you're tasked to stop a bandit group from harassing a bartender, and the quest is actually good. There were several optional tasks along the way, all of which involved attribute checks I couldn't pass because I put all my points in Endurance.

One of the optional tasks is to steal an egg from a Deathclaw, which is great design since you cannot hope to kill it at low level, but is forced to run to live and tell the tale (and return later to kill it when you're strong enough). I was presented with a diplomatic way to end the quest, but I just sneaked through the bandit camp and shot the gang leader full of holes instead.

If Bethesda had just shipped the game in this state, they would have avoided the vast majority of the controversies since their playerbase is OK with bugs (and doesn't really give a shit about physical items in a Collector's Edition they didn't buy anyway) as long as there are NPCs to interact with and choices, small or big, to make.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Database is database. Beth just generally is very sloppy at coding, forgetting basic checks all the time. And they don't care or are not given the time to do it. Plus they took over every fkn scripts from FO4 without even proofreading it apparently. The gutsies are still set to "ignore armor" instead of "armor piercing" because the FO4 monkey ticked the wrong box FFS. In an offline game, they just have modders to fix it for them.

Examples?
In the Derpguard DLC for Skyrim, if you put a bottle of blood in your Serana's inventory, she would drink it, being classified as a health potion. That would then turn THE PLAYER into a vampire even if he was a furry, because Beth didn't bother to check "is the player drinking it", and "is the player a vampire already" before setting his hunger level to 1.
Never gets fixed.
In FO4 Yaoguai roast are supposed to give "+10 melee dmg". There isn't even a function in the script that could do it! So they set it +500% melee dmg instead. "It just works."

THAT'S how Beth rolls. The engine might be old and limited, but blaming human errors on it is uncalled for.

FO76 would have been better as a non-persistent game with online capabilities.

That one is true. But why make only money once when you can get it every month?

 

[Bliblablubb]

the camera spazzed out and got locked behind my character.

That is apparently a new bug for... a week or so. For no reason at all, there was nothing there needing fixing in the char gen.
Leave it to Bethesda to bug out things that were runing flawlesly for a year.

 

[Cirtdear]

Men I have a proposal. Earlier today I announced I was quiting FO76. In my time off since then I've devised an easy solution to my troubles.

..
-Increased private storage by 2 LBS at a time, up to 50 LBS max. This is permanent but limited to the area.
-PvE buff. Resistances.
-PvP buff. Stealth or Armor.
-Neutral buff. Run speed, jump height.
-Get a simple drink/food in the variety local to that area.
-Boost a SPECIAL slot point and get a free perk card which remains active until you leave the area.
-Purchase vertibird fuel. After enough fuel you can travel by vertibird and be airdropped anywhere on the map. More fuel for farther distances from area of origin.
-Trigger a Special Encounter. Most expensive to save up for but you get a very exotic event which will show up local to your area.

..

After playing the game longer i'll say my proposal holds up in its diagnosis. The game leans heavily on combat & loot as a driving force.
As a result this drives player's decision making rather than a strategy toward how you'd like to play.



In hindsight there were a couple weaknesses.

1) you must go to the areas you want to work with your strategy, or adapt your strategy.
if your strategy involved dropping in at multiple areas in a sequence it may take too long to earn up the points.
consequently would only be helpful toward very long term strategies.
2) the proposed bonuses did not offset the intense need for loot.

To Solve #1)
You can pay caps to collect points toward a bonus while not being there. However you can only do this for 1 area at a time and must remain online.
The caps are slowly collected and if you run out of caps you'll stop earning points. While still a longterm deal, you can rely on earning a benefit from somewhere
while not having to literally be there.

To Solve #2)
Here are the new additional bonuses:
-XP% Gain. (big boost for a short time)
-Repair one item at or below your level to max. No material cost.
-100 Caps.
-Refill ammo type for the weapon your holding by 50.

A difference with these bonuses is only one of them should be available per location.
XP% gain will be allowed to be carried outside the area you got it from.

 

[Myobi]

… or you know, Bugthesda could stop being greedy cunts and actually allow players to host real private servers, instead of this milk’me’daddy subscription-based instanced horseshit they came up with, that way, as usual, their own community could do their own fucking job and fix the fucking game.

 

[Cirtdear]

… or you know, Bugthesda could stop being greedy cunts and actually allow players to host real private servers, instead of this milk’me’daddy subscription-based instanced horseshit they came up with, that way, as usual, their own community could do their own fucking job and fix the fucking game.

Bethesda games aren't built for modding they are built for mods. Modders have persevered before but it's time to let bethesda work for us for once. They just shat out Wastelanders for free.

If in 2 more months if they haven't fixed the bugs talked about, just give up. It would mean there is no division of labor they can form, and no pocket deep enough to properly fix this "passion project".

 

[Risewild]

If in 2 more months if they haven't fixed the bugs talked about, just give up. It would mean there is no division of labor they can form, and no pocket deep enough to properly fix this "passion project".

Isn't it the case that Bethesda hasn't fixed some bugs reported since the game was publicly released? Also the case that they focused on releasing Atom shop stuff before they released some updates to fix serious bugs, and they actually delayed the Wastelanders while releasing the Fallout 1st service instead?

I still don't understand how people can trust Bethesda will prioritize fixing stuff over monetization.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Bethesda's priority is always the cashshop, with hillarious moments.

Last year they placed ingame shop vendors at every trainstation, with large paper cutouts pointing towards it. And music playing. Dafuq? You can access it at any time from your map anyways, no need for an ingame version.
My guess is some overpayed middle management had the awsome idea: "To increase sales all we have to do is increase awareness for the shop!"
You already get bombed by the shop everytime you log in, putting those there blurting in your ear was the proverbial drop too much.
They quickly removed it again. Big surprise.

 

[Myobi]

Isn't it the case that Bethesda hasn't fixed some bugs reported since the game was publicly released?

It's actually even better than that, Fallout 76 has bugs that have been reported since previous Fallout titles.

"2 more months", roflmao.

 

[Cirtdear]

Myobi, Risewild

Don't buy atoms or sub to fallout 1st until you observe their next moves.

We're often told good and evil have to go together or it's too hard to tell a difference. I feel in this case the same is true of sanity/insanity.
However there is not a single sane way to look at insane behavior. Sane is sane. The most sane way we have to look at this is something like game theory.
On the other hand chaos theory suggests anything could happen. What I can do is make predictions and learn from them. If i'm going to test the odds that
they will do the right thing, then given their history, it will be within a couple of months. Ofcourse a proper model of the situation is they will revert back to bad behavior no matter what.

edit:
"It's actually even better than that, Fallout 76 has bugs that have been reported since previous Fallout titles."
More compelling would be demonstrating the newly ignored bugs has everything to do with the patchwork job done for this game. I want to speculate but it goes back to the sane/insane thing.
And by patchwork I do not mean subsequent patches I mean the way they glued together their multiplayer framework for release.

 

[Myobi]

Myobi, Risewild

Don't buy atoms or sub to fallout 1st until you observe their next moves.

Thank fucking god for your brilliant advice, here I was just about to throw my credit card at the screen, god knows where I would be at this point if it wasn’t for you.

… but yes, their “next moves”, a true mystery!

We're often told good and evil have to go together or it's too hard to tell a difference. I feel in this case the same is true of sanity/insanity.

However there is not a single sane way to look at insane behavior. Sane is sane. The most sane way we have to look at this is something like game theory.

On the other hand chaos theory suggests anything could happen. What I can do is make predictions and learn from them. If i'm going to test the odds that

they will do the right thing, then given their history, it will be within a couple of months. Ofcourse a proper model of the situation is they will revert back to bad behavior no matter what.

Fucking hell that must be some dope ass fucking weed.

More compelling would be demonstrating the newly ignored bugs has everything to do with the patchwork job done for this game

… feels like building a fancy new house on top of some shitty ass foundations, just to have it sinking little by little over the time, but instead of fixing that shit, you just keep fixing the cracks that will keep popping up on the new fancy walls every now and then because that’s just “more compelling”.

 

[rusty_shackleford]