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

[Cael]

They're both garbage. That's in the same vein.

I believe one was:

The other, however, was:

 

[Avonaeon]

Well, I said that the world itself doesn't make any sense and that there's no consistency in world building. That's clear. It follows rather peculiar, idiosyncratic rules.

Even the locations had that consistency problem though, is what I'm saying. Regardless of how locations fit (or didn't) into the world as a whole, the locations by their own internal logic, didn't make sense.

 

[Quillon]

Well, I said that the world itself doesn't make any sense and that there's no consistency in world building. That's clear. It follows rather peculiar, idiosyncratic rules.

Even the locations had that consistency problem though, is what I'm saying. Regardless of how locations fit (or didn't) into the world as a whole, the locations by their own internal logic, didn't make sense.

But it just works. /topic

 

[Turjan]

Well, I said that the world itself doesn't make any sense and that there's no consistency in world building. That's clear. It follows rather peculiar, idiosyncratic rules.

Even the locations had that consistency problem though, is what I'm saying. Regardless of how locations fit (or didn't) into the world as a whole, the locations by their own internal logic, didn't make sense.

I'm not sure whether it's a language barrier, but the internal logic of those places is mostly the same. The criticisms you mentioned (skeletons in booths telling ambient stories, trash that nobody removes everywhere) don't make sense in our world, but they are consistently treated that way in that world. The internal logic is intact. Nobody removes trash or skeletons that magically still take on poses. They don't even move skeletons from their mattresses when they go to sleep. Fixing the holes in your roof is a sure sign you are a nazi. "Rules of the wasteland". It's slapstick.

This all breaks down at the moment when the main quest suddenly calls back to our modern sensibilities and wants us to act "reasonably" or worse, "emotionally involved". That's the moment when everything fails. There's a complete disconnect between the world they built and the story they wanted to tell in that world. Whatever that story was supposed to be, as even that one fails.

 

[Avonaeon]

If the logic of a place is this lady has been living in a diner for many years, then the place needs to reflect that, which it doesn't. Just because locations have a consistent lack of logic, doesn't automatically make that logic valid.

 

[PanteraNera]

the internal logic of those places is mostly the same.

Yeah the "logic" is that someone though "Oh that is a cool idea", "Oh that is funny".
The problem is that most of the times it just makes no fucking sense and feels unbelievable.

 

[moleman]

I think the problem with F 4 (and F 3) is, that their game worlds are designed to be theme parks instead of having a consistency. The locations in these games are meant to be attractions for you to visit. Even the hud gives you directions to find them.
Thats why you find the locations to be full of loot and having still functional computers after 200 years.
And thats why you find the skeletons in the diner.

 

[Turjan]

the internal logic of those places is mostly the same.

Yeah the "logic" is that someone though "Oh that is a cool idea", "Oh that is funny".
The problem is that most of the times it just makes no fucking sense and feels unbelievable.

What makes you think that the goal was to create a believable world? It's quite obvious that this was not even intended. Which is why the main quest sticks out like a sore thumb.

 

[PanteraNera]

What makes you think that the goal was to create a believable world? It's quite obvious that this was not even intended. Which is why the main quest sticks out like a sore thumb.

What makes you think, that I think that the goal was to create a believable world?

I just stated what one (of countless problems) I personally have with Bethesdas Fallout games.

So how do you know that Bethesda did not wanted to make a believable world (and failed utterly at doing so). You talked to the team? Citation?

I personally think (and this is neither a fact nor do I have a sources that validates that) that they are a bunch of lazy and bad game devs (when it comes to story, lore and world-building).
It's like a bunch of teenagers that have wild ideas of "what is cool and funny" and no real lead that holds things together or stops them from coming up with the most stupid shit.

 

[moleman]

It's like a bunch of teenagers that have wild ideas of "what is cool and funny" and no real lead that holds things together or stops them from coming up with the most stupid shit.

Like that ghoul kid in F4 trapped in a fridge for 200 years while the parents live 50 meters away.

 

[Turjan]

So how do you know that Bethesda did not wanted to make a believable world (and failed utterly at doing so). You talked to the team? Citation?

Did you look at the game? All the stories, even those about what happened before the bombs fell, paint a grotesquely absurd world. Think of the dozens of stories that involve scores of customers of diverse establishments killed and mutilated, whether it's big department stores, grand malls or amusement parks, without any consequences. Does that sound believable to you that the, at that moment allegedly still functioning, society would tolerate anything like that?

I personally think (and this is neither a fact nor do I have a sources that validates that) that they are a bunch of lazy and bad game devs (when it comes to story, lore and world-building).
It's like a bunch of teenagers that have wild ideas of "what is cool and funny" and no real lead that holds things together or stops them from coming up with the most stupid shit.

Well, humor is certainly a very subjective element.

 

[PanteraNera]

Did you look at the game?

Yes.

Still I see no point of your opinion that disproves any point of my opinion.

Well, humor is certainly a very subjective element.

Certainly, which is why I liked Fallout 1 the most.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

But in a Bethesda game, the combat will be trigger-level bad, the exploration will suck, and the writing will be suicide-inducing. Character development will make you weaker as you play, and the world will level in most hideous ways (rats clad in power armor or something).

Dude even most Bethesda haters on an old codger complaint site like this will admit they do a good job at exploration and world design. That's pretty much the core of why their games are immensely popular and sell millions upon millions of copies even on consoles where there's zero mods.

No, that's one of the most annoyingly pervasive myths about Bethesda games. The combat and writing in their games is so obviously bad, that no one can defend them, but exploration leaves just enough rope for someone to try. What you have to realize, is that Bethesda games, due to their immense size, have ALWAYS used either procedural generation or some other form of copy-n-paste to generate much of their open worlds. Whether you are talking about Daggerfall or Morrowind or Oblivion or Skyrim or Fallout 3/4, much of the content feels exactly the same, which kills any decent exploration.

Take their best game, Morrowind. It has maybe 5-6 types of locations (Shrines, Caves, Tombs, etc) scattered around the world, but there is like 400 of each type. The problem is, once you've seen one or two of one type, you've seen them all. The layouts are slightly different, the loot might be different, but it's pretty much the same experience. There might be a few "unique" locations, but the vast majority are just copy-paste. Compare that with something like Piranha Bytes games, or New Vegas, or Witcher 3, and how unique each location in those games feels, and you will understand why exploration in Bethesda games is completely overrated.

 

[Mech]

Compare that with something like Piranha Bytes games, or New Vegas, or Witcher 3, and how unique each location in those games feels

 

[Sigourn]

So how do you know that Bethesda did not wanted to make a believable world (and failed utterly at doing so). You talked to the team? Citation?

Did you look at the game? All the stories, even those about what happened before the bombs fell, paint a grotesquely absurd world. Think of the dozens of stories that involve scores of customers of diverse establishments killed and mutilated, whether it's big department stores, grand malls or amusement parks, without any consequences. Does that sound believable to you that the, at that moment allegedly still functioning, society would tolerate anything like that?

I personally think (and this is neither a fact nor do I have a sources that validates that) that they are a bunch of lazy and bad game devs (when it comes to story, lore and world-building).
It's like a bunch of teenagers that have wild ideas of "what is cool and funny" and no real lead that holds things together or stops them from coming up with the most stupid shit.

Well, humor is certainly a very subjective element.

I agree with you in that Bethesda shouldn't be judged by the same metric we judge the classic Fallout games (and New Vegas), because it was never their intention to make a good RPG or to have good worldbuilding. The question isn't "can Bethesda make a good RPG?", but "is Bethesda even interested in making a good RPG?". The answer is clearly "no": they are the most successful RPG company of modern times, why should they try any harder? Todd Howard has made four consecutive games named "Game of the Year": Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, and Fallout 4.

I don't like Bethesda games, but it doesn't take a genius to notice that maybe, maybe, these games appeal to different targets. That Fallout 4 massively outsells Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, because 1) It appeals to a different target, and 2) It is actually well received. Bethesda's greatness comes from actually delivering, whereas most companies devoted to making a good RPG fail. And this is something that no one in this forum can reasonably deny: wherever you look, people sucking Bethesda's dick; wherever you look, Codexers disappointed at new releases of games that promised to be good and turned out to be mediocre.

The reason a lot of people disliked New Vegas exploration and a lot of people loved Fallout 3 exploration is because New Vegas was a fucking empty desert. Fallout was like this. Fallout 2 was like this. New Vegas is like this, because it was clearly designed to be an isometric Fallout game, to the point you could completely remake the game in the classic engine and nothing of value would be lost. The closest you get in the New Vegas open world to something that could be remotely called "complex" is the western part of the city of New Vegas, where the are many buildings around. It isn't surprising that the area fears very similar to Fallout 3, another game that was set around lots of destroyed buildings. And this is what the Bethesda audience wanted.

The New Vegas worldscape is open, empty desert wherever you look at. I love New Vegas, it's my favorite RPG of all time, but traversing the landscape is really shit. If Bethesda RPGs are called "hiking simulators", where does that leave New Vegas? Unless you fast travel everywhere (a good sign the devs failed at making an interesting world), you will be running all the damn time. Just look at your encounter with Vulpes in the Strip: you are told to go meet Caesar. "Cool".

Then you find out you have to run through minutes of empty desert all the way back to Cottonwood Cove, because short of Camp Searchlight, there's absolutely fucking nothing to see on your way there.

I, we, may forgive Obsidian for it. We know what they were trying to do. The general public won't, because they didn't ask for a great RPG. They asked for a great Bethesda game, and New Vegas isn't it. I wouldn't be surprised if a few retards read my post and thought "BETHESDA GUD, RPGS BAD!", completely missing the point.

 

[Sigourn]

Compare that with something like Piranha Bytes games, or New Vegas, or Witcher 3, and how unique each location in those games feels, and you will understand why exploration in Bethesda games is completely overrated.

New Vegas is the most boring game to do exploration in that I have ever played.

- There's nothing to be found, short of kewl weapons (thank God this is an RPG and not a shooter, right?).
- Most locations are extremely barebones. Tons of empty shacks, houses, and more, with nothing inside of them. The very definition of "copy-paste".
- And the game simply looks like shit and uninspiring.

Gothic was great, though. It didn't try to make a huge world full of locations. Instead, it was a small world filled with stuff to find. Not "locations", but "stuff". And that made it seem much more natural.

 

[Mastermind]

People who think NV was great for exploration should be lobotomized.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

New Vegas was not as good as Piranha Bytes games for exploration (stuff like quest compass and modern quest structure really hurt it), but in terms of uniqueness of locations, it was pretty damn good. Memorable Vaults, the factory with the ghouls going off into space, NCR military camps, the town with the T-Rex, deathclaw mine, etc, the game was full of unique locations.

 

[Sigourn]

New Vegas was not as good as Piranha Bytes games for exploration (stuff like quest compass and modern quest structure really hurt it), but in terms of uniqueness of locations, it was pretty damn good. Memorable Vaults, the factory with the ghouls going off into space, NCR military camps, the town with the T-Rex, deathclaw mine, etc, the game was full of unique locations.

It had its fair share of unique locations. But if by NCR military camps you are talking about the numerous camps spread around the game whose sole purpose is to serve as hubs for a certain quest (since there's nothing else to be found there, at all), I really have to question what do you mean by "good for exploration".

In my latest playthrough I made it a point to explore as much as I could. To go out of my way to search for places I had never been to. In those travels, I found:

- An irradiated site that had nothing to be found.
- A small Super Mutant camp that had nothing to be found.
- A Lakelurk nest on the other side of the Colorado that had nothing to be found.

And it repeats from there. In my opinion, it seems like Obsidian didn't know how to deal with these locations. I presume their thought process went something like "What would Bethesda do here?" -> "No, that's unrealistic, let's make it boring instead". It's commendable. But also a goddamn mistake to fill the game with locations that have nothing going on for them (this is why I say you could put New Vegas into the isometric engine, completely getting rid of these small places, and nothing would be lost).

I personally believe RPGs should add optional locations that had QUESTS as opposed to optional locations that just have loot. That would truly make exploration worthwile. And this is where New Vegas failed, as you meet most worthwile locations over the course of the main quest. Even the Brotherhood of Steel quests take you straight to the different Vaults, map marker™ included.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

By military camps I mean the big camp south where there are quests for the medic and others, and then Camp Golf where you also find unique quests, and the huge camp north where you can blow up the train and handle other quests. Again, I am not saying New Vegas was the best at exploration, I am just saying the locations in it felt unique, and worthy of exploration. Most had something that made them different, some piece of story, or some quests, or something. As opposed to Bethesda locations.

 

[Sigourn]

By military camps I mean the big camp south where there are quests for the medic and others, and then Camp Golf where you also find unique quests, and the huge camp north where you can blow up the train and handle other quests. Again, I am not saying New Vegas was the best at exploration, I am just saying the locations in it felt unique, and worthy of exploration. Most had something that made them different, some piece of story, or some quests, or something. As opposed to Bethesda locations.

Mmm, yeah. Camp Forlorn Hope (south), Camp Golf (hotel), and Camp McCarran. Yes, they are great locations because of their content. But they also serve to show how bad Obsidian handled a lot of other locations. In this specific case, how they handled the rest of the camps: a handful of generic NPCs, one unique NPC to turn in the quest you are given in Camp Golf IIRC, and that's it. A real shame.

 

[Jarmaro]

- An irradiated site that had nothing to be found.

You mean that one valley with derailed train? Wasn't a vault there? Or at least many geckos of diffrent type? Good place to hunt them.

- A small Super Mutant camp that had nothing to be found.

There are many such camps, so I can't tell which one you mean. I don't see why having just supermutant camp would be wrong. They nearly always have some good on them. It isn't necessary to have unique quest for every supermutant group.

A Lakelurk nest on the other side of the Colorado that had nothing to be found.

Google gave me diffrent opinion:

In case anyone wants some free items and good xp, if you go all the way southeast, and cross the Colorado, theres a lakelurk nest there with about 10-12 lurks, and then 2 duffel bags with various types of ammo (.308 had the most). There's also a 9mm machine gun, and Reinforced Combat Armor / Helmet. Not markII, just the regular stuff.

It seems that you have problem with not finding anything useful for YOU. If you don't need something it doesn't mean it cease to exist.
I played NV multiple times and never felt dissapointed by exploring, but maybe we have diffrent goals while doing it.

I personally believe RPGs should add optional locations that had QUESTS as opposed to optional locations that just have loot. That would truly make exploration worthwile. And this is where New Vegas failed, as you meet most worthwile locations over the course of the main quest. Even the Brotherhood of Steel quests take you straight to the different Vaults, map marker™ included.

New Vegas has opptional locations with quests that are worthwile exploring, period. Denying that is ridiculous.
Also, you don't need BoS to enter vaults. You could just, you know... explore and find them yourself.

You know what? This entire F76 talking and your bullshiting is making me eager to replay NV. It's this time of the year.

 

[Sigourn]

You mean that one valley with derailed train? Wasn't a vault there? Or at least many geckos of diffrent type? Good place to hunt them.

This one.

There are many such camps, so I can't tell which one you mean. I don't see why having just supermutant camp would be wrong. They nearly always have some good on them. It isn't necessary to have unique quest for every supermutant group.

There's no quest marker there, but it's this one:

"An encampment of 2 to 4 super mutants can be found northeast of Ranger Station Bravo and northwest of The Devil's Throat. These enemies respawn after 3 days"

Google gave me diffrent opinion:

In case anyone wants some free items and good xp, if you go all the way southeast, and cross the Colorado, theres a lakelurk nest there with about 10-12 lurks, and then 2 duffel bags with various types of ammo (.308 had the most). There's also a 9mm machine gun, and Reinforced Combat Armor / Helmet. Not markII, just the regular stuff.

It seems that you have problem with not finding anything useful for YOU. If you don't need something it doesn't mean it cease to exist.

I admit I was wrong. Then again, at that stage of the game I was going around with rather good armor. That's a different issue with the game: by the time you get to New Vegas, you can fully deck yourself out with the strongest armor available, barring Power Armor and Ranger armor.



I played NV multiple times and never felt dissapointed by exploring, but maybe we have diffrent goals while doing it.

New Vegas has opptional locations with quests that are worthwile exploring, period. Denying that is ridiculous.

I'm not denying it. I'm saying they are a minority. For instance:

Also, you don't need BoS to enter vaults. You could just, you know... explore and find them yourself.

I could find them by myself. But I'm not about to deny you will eventually find the Vaults by doing the main quest. Else, everything can be considered "optional": I could find Cottonwood Cove by myself, but that doesn't mean the game railroads you to Cottonwood Cove if you simply follow the main quest.

 

[jf8350143]

You know, unique locations doesn't really make a great exploration experience. You can make NV a game with tons of mini-places combined into a world map (like what they did with deadfire) , instead of one big open world, the game will actually becoming much better.

You don't have to holding the W button for 10 minutes just to find a new interesting place. When playing NV the walking around part is the most boring one, while talking to NPCs and finishing quest is much more interesting. It's pretty much the opposite of Fallout 4, where walking around and picking up garbage and killing mobs is quite fun(especially if you use some loot mod to make the enemy dropping more cool stuff), while talking to NPCs and doing quest gets bored very quickly.

 

[Sigourn]

You know, unique locations doesn't really make a great exploration experience. You can make NV a game with tons of mini-places combined into a world map (like what they did with deadfire) , instead of one big open world, the game will actually becoming much better.

You don't have to holding the W button for 10 minutes just to find a new interesting place. When playing NV the walking around part is the most boring one, while talking to NPCs and finishing quest is much more interesting. It's pretty much the opposite of Fallout 4, where walking around and picking up garbage and killing mobs is quite fun(especially if you use some loot mod to make the enemy dropping more cool stuff), while talking to NPCs and doing quest gets bored very quickly.

And this is ultimately why I like New Vegas but I don't like Fallout 3 or Fallout 4. The issue is that the emphasis is completely around combat and exploration. And that's just not what I'm looking for in an RPG. New Vegas is the opposite: the emphasis is around quests and NPC interactions, and that's why a lot of Bethesda fans don't like it, and mistake "dialogue" with "exposition" (this is the most retarded meme I've heard).

So both type of games have their strengths and flaws, but ultimately New Vegas' strenghts are the kind I can get behind in an RPG. If Obsidian had managed to make an RPG that was also fun outside of dialogue and quests, New Vegas would have been a 10/10 game.