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

[Child of Malkav]

Unfortunately this game will do just fine. Streamers and YouTubers who "doubted" the game before, are now seeing the light or, more likely Beth's money. And besides even if it flops it won't be enough to actually shake them financially, they're big now. "It would have been an experiment and that's it. No harm in trying, right?" That'll be their statement and maybe say how they learned/grown wiser and stronger from it. Classic PR from that guy everyone around here loves Pete Hines or maybe even from the man himself, The Todd.
Yeah, we won't be rid of Bethesda anytime soon nor easily.

 

[Wunderbar]

 

[Xor]

And those who thought F3 was shit think that F4 is somewhat less shit.

I didn't remove Fallout 4 from inventory after the DLC was out and modded the shit out of it out of sheer curiosity and yeah, it's less shit than Fallout 3. It's not even a Fallout game, it's just a post-apocalyptic murder simulator where you run around genociding raiders and ghouls since there are only about 3 towns in the whole fucking game and everything else is hostile. Basically the same way Skyrim is better than Oblivion by virtue of not even trying to be an RPG anymore. It gets boring pretty quickly unless you're really into bethesda hiking simulators or you're like me and you play mindless games while marathoning TV series or something.

 

[thesheeep]

Basically the same way Skyrim is better than Oblivion by virtue of not even trying to be an RPG anymore.

I don't know how Skyrim would be less of an RPG than Oblivion, to be honest. I think they're both on the same level of "sprinkled with RPG". What's the actual difference between them other than production quality and setting?

Anyway, that is precisely why F4 is a better game. It is a better shooter and doesn't even try to be an RPG anymore, those few stats are about as much as the "stats" in Shadow Warrior.

 

[markec]

 

[Squid]

Basically the same way Skyrim is better than Oblivion by virtue of not even trying to be an RPG anymore.

I don't know how Skyrim would be less of an RPG than Oblivion, to be honest. I think they're both on the same level of "sprinkled with RPG". What's the actual difference between them other than production quality and setting?

That's how I feel about both series in general now. You don't view or expect them to be RPGs, you view/expect them to be sandboxes. That's what they are and that's how they should be judged. I still hated Fallout 4.

 

[Xor]

That's how I feel about both series in general now. You don't view or expect them to be RPGs, you view/expect them to be sandboxes. That's what they are and that's how they should be judged. I still hated Fallout 4.

I didn't say it was good. I started checking out sandbox games after putting a ton of hours into Breath of the Wild and Fallout 4 is pretty shit but Fallout 3 is a really low bar to clear.

Spoiler

Curie was a qt though

 

[Moink]

Fallout 4 and Skyrim are much better games than Fallout 3 and Oblivion to be honest, I've been saying that they should just abandon the idea of Fallout/TES being RPG's and just make fun to play action adventure games for awhile now since it's obvious they really don't want to make RPG's anymore.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Is this just a subjective impression I'm getting, or are so many youtubers calling out Bethesda on their dated graphics and clunky animations all at once? It's like a whole new generation is on youtube, which has had no experience with even skyrim or FO3, and they are suddenly feeling annoyed by things which the "old" gamebryo crowd had gotten used to?

Fallout 76 is suddenly looking like an aging guy who came at a teenage night in the club dressed in the latest 80s fashion. Everyone is giving him strange looks and he is feeling out of his element.

 

[thesheeep]

Is this just a subjective impression I'm getting, or are so many youtubers calling out Bethesda on their dated graphics and clunky animations all at once? It's like a whole new generation is on youtube, which has had no experience with even skyrim or FO3, and they are suddenly feeling annoyed by things which the "old" gamebryo crowd had gotten used to?

Fallout 76 is suddenly looking like an aging guy who came at a teenage night in the club dressed in the latest 80s fashion. Everyone is giving him strange looks and he is feeling out of his element.

No, it's definitely true.
It's not even just the usual graphics whorism ("doesn't look as good as the current best looking title so its ugly"). It is that, too, of course, because many people are graphics whores who would be better served watching movies than playing games.
But this time, there is some added "insult" here, because this is Bethesda and they have shown that they can release something much better looking and MUCH, MUCH better performing (Doom, Doom Eternal, Prey, Wolfenstein, ...). However, this game doesn't even come close to their own standards. It is as if Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay had looked like Deus Ex: Invisible War.

The reason is of course the dated engine and, likely, their own in-house dev team sticking to that engine and their (likely) aged work pipelines like rats to a cadaver. Changing the established workflow (and engines) of a team that worked with it for years is very difficult, and it seems Bethesda is shying away from the challenge. Or they are trying to squeeze out the maximum with minimum effort before shutting the engine down. Who knows.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Looking at the videos, this game looks exactly like F4. F4 came out, what, 3 years ago? And back then it was already pretty widely criticized for looking dated and shit. Add performance issues and the same engine-related bugs that were there in F4 and even the fabulously optimistic shill brigade will start to feel some itching in their butts.

It's not like bethesda is gonna care though. They're just probing how far can they go with getting money for no effort whatsoever and I'm pretty sure they will make it again, although the reviews will probably be less then stellar.

 

[AwesomeButton]

If you ask me, Bethesda have gotten too used to always getting a pass, but these are not the times of Skyrim or FO3 any more. The other reason they fear of switching technology is that if they lose the modding community, they lose a huge chunk of revenue. At this point I wonder if they even have a skilled enough development team to develop a new technology. I imagine the Fallouts' dev team consists of people who only know how to use the gamebryo toolset.

 

[Makabb]

Todd is now one with the machine, Gamebryo, you cannot separate one from another.

 

[DeepOcean]

It seems that their next game will use a new engine, keeping in mind that Betheda has the habit of giving new names to Gamebryo and claiming it is a new engine.

About the game, it is very interesting how all youtubers that got invited to the Bethesda event are strangely positive about the game, while the rest are shitting on the game hard, coincidence?

 

[RK47]

Is this just a subjective impression I'm getting, or are so many youtubers calling out Bethesda on their dated graphics and clunky animations all at once? It's like a whole new generation is on youtube, which has had no experience with even skyrim or FO3, and they are suddenly feeling annoyed by things which the "old" gamebryo crowd had gotten used to?

Fallout 76 is suddenly looking like an aging guy who came at a teenage night in the club dressed in the latest 80s fashion. Everyone is giving him strange looks and he is feeling out of his element.

The problem is the engine looks dated.
And it plays worse than Fallout 4 due to multiplayer.

 

[Puteo]

Some people on everyone's favorite site, the reddit, have done some digging and found Fallout 76 to be completely lacking in some of the most basic anti-exploit and anti-cheat protections:

Welcome to 5 reasons not to use an engine that you made entirely open and provided all the tools needed to mod that engine in an online game. Oh and how to entirely not secure anything for your users.

I am as much a Fallout and Bethesda fan as everyone else, I've sunk around 4000 hours into Fallout4 and have been making mods for about 2 years. So when I got into the PC Beta and it allowed me to download the client and files, I started playing with them.

Number 1: There are no server checks to verify models or file integrity. Want to make trees smaller, or player models bright colors to see them easier? Go right ahead, here are the tools to do it!

Number 2: Terrain and invisible walls/collision is client side! Want to walk through walls? Open up that beautiful .esm file and edit it. The server doesn't care or check!

Number 3: Want to save money on server hardware and make ping a little more manageable? Go ahead and open up client to client communication but don't encrypt it or obfuscate it in anyway. Open up Wireshark while playing and nab anyone's IP you want! Send packets to the server to auto use consumables, all very nicely and in plain text! Even get health info and player location, why waste time injecting the executable and getting nabbed by anti-cheat when you can get all info from the network!

Number 4: Want to grief people and be a God? Go ahead and keep looping the packet captured in Wireshark reporting you gave full HP. Why would the server care about something as little and not game breaking like this?!?! It's a great idea to let the client tell the server it's state and the server not check anything it's being told! The possibilities with this are endless and probably able to just give yourself items by telling the server you picked it up!

Number 5: Someone in your game being mean? Again have Wireshark? Well let's just forge a packet with the disconnect command in it and knock them offline!

In conclusion: Bethesda should not have just made Fallout76 by throwing mods on it from Nexus and sold it as a new game. Have fun in the wasteland gamers.

Edit: To those crying "lies" and wanting "proof" here ya go the first cheat mod uploaded to Nexus. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout76/mods/24

Oh wait, it's just lock picking that's still locked behind a card skill/requirement to do higher level locks. However this proves several things: No clientside file checks, and the majority of mechanics are clientside and the server just listens to the client.

https://np.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/9u71m1/get_ready_for_endless_fun_on_pc/

 

[ortucis]

I am as much a Fallout and Bethesda fan as everyone else, I've sunk around 4000 hours into Fallout4 and have been making mods for about 2 years. So when I got into the PC Beta and it allowed me to download the client and files, I started playing with them.

What he's trying to say is that he has been working on fixing Bethesda's games for free for 2 years and despite spending 4000 hours building virtual settlements nobody gives a shit about in a broken game, is still surprised that Bethesda is releasing another broken game.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Some people on everyone's favorite site, the reddit, have done some digging and found Fallout 76 to be completely lacking in some of the most basic anti-exploit and anti-cheat protections:

Welcome to 5 reasons not to use an engine that you made entirely open and provided all the tools needed to mod that engine in an online game. Oh and how to entirely not secure anything for your users....

https://np.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/9u71m1/get_ready_for_endless_fun_on_pc/

Hahahaha wow. I knew it was going to be broken but that's just amazing. It sounds less like a real game and more like something groups release as a test of your hacking skills. In fact I think it's actually worse, since I recall that Pwn Adventure at least tracks HP server side, and if you tried telling it you had full health, you'd die anyway. Unencrypted, plain-text, client-controlled multiplayer is the absolute worst way you could possibly implement this. Fucking incredible.

 

[Talby]

If it's really so easy to manipulate things client side, we're in for a funride. God mode cheats, infinite ammo cheats, noclip, and that's just the least creative ways of fucking over other players. Hackers will join servers and kill everyone instantly, erasing their inventory and setting all stats to 0 and making their characters unplayable. And Beth can't fix it without completely rewriting everything, they'd have to make the game over again from scratch. The shitshow will be glorious.

 

[Talby]

So, what shall it be? Do you pre-order Fallout 76, or do you die here? JOIN! DIE! JOIN! DIE!

 

[ADL]

It seems that their next game will use a new engine, keeping in mind that Betheda has the habit of giving new names to Gamebryo and claiming it is a new engine.

About the game, it is very interesting how all youtubers that got invited to the Bethesda event are strangely positive about the game, while the rest are shitting on the game hard, coincidence?

“I think a lot of people, who are not making games don’t understand what the word “engine” stands for,” Howard said. “They think the engine is this one thing, we view it as technology. There’s a lot of different pieces and for every game, parts of that change. For example the renderer, the AI, the animations, the script language and so on. Some people talk about Gamebryo but we haven’t used that in a decade. A lot of our engine contains a lot of middleware like Havoc.”

“For Fallout 76 we have changed a lot,” he continued. “The game uses a new renderer, a new lighting system and a new system for the landscape generation. For Starfield even more of it changes. And for The Elder Scrolls 6, out there on the horizon even more. We like our editor. It allows us to create worlds really fast and the modders know it really well. There are some elementary ways we create our games and that will continue because that lets us be efficient and we think it works best.”

 

[Xor]

I think I gave Bethesda too much credit when I assumed this game wouldn't have mods. Apparently they were too stupid to realize why that would be a bad idea in a multiplayer game or were too incompetent to figure out a different way to store things than in .esm and .esp files, which have been well understood by modders since Morrowind. Also if it really does transmit network information in plaintext that's hilarious. Best netcode since Diablo 1.

A lot of these problems are fixable, by the way, but I doubt they'll be fixed on day 1 unless they were already working on this stuff behind the scenes.

 

[Squid]

I didn't say it was good.

I didn't say you said it was good either. I did not mean to imply that lmao.

 

[RK47]

I think I gave Bethesda too much credit when I assumed this game wouldn't have mods. Apparently they were too stupid to realize why that would be a bad idea in a multiplayer game or were too incompetent to figure out a different way to store things than in .esm and .esp files, which have been well understood by modders since Morrowind. Also if it really does transmit network information in plaintext that's hilarious. Best netcode since Diablo 1.

A lot of these problems are fixable, by the way, but I doubt they'll be fixed on day 1 unless they were already working on this stuff behind the scenes.

Hey, at least it's not made in China for mobile.

 

[Scruffy]

97 pages already? what a shitshow this website has become, shame on you all