Fallout

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mharr
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Re: Fallout

Postby mharr » Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:12 pm

The player dynamics seem like an obvious disaster, are there more layers than that?

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Joxam
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Re: Fallout

Postby Joxam » Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:30 pm

He might just mean people setting themselves up for disappointment despite all the best efforts of the devs. Like, they spent half of an E3 Press conference doing a Q and A specifically designed to make sure the game wasn't 'another no man's sky' by explaining in crystal clear detail that this was Age of Fallout but people will still claim that they were lied to when it comes out. I don't know, I fuck with Age of Conan and Fallout so this is right up my alley, but I can see why it wouldn't be for everyone.
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beatbandito
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Re: Fallout

Postby beatbandito » Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:39 pm

Online survival games are, by nature, fuckfests.

From what I've seen of actual gameplay, it seems like it's setting up to be pretty over-the-top with its antics, as is expected from a series where two of the most trademark weapons are a personal nuclear platform and a gun that fires all the junk that isn't nuclear weapons (and bullets I guess). The thing is, it does seem like it'll otherwise be a featureless, drab open empty space like, again, most survival games seem to require.

But that poster doesn't make me worry about that, it makes me think about what an amazing concept it could be. They seem to want to step out of the sixties vibe into something more 70sish, about the first vault to unlock and restart the world. So imagine, if you will, the following trailer.

This song came to mind, or something better for the period with the same jazzy sound coming from a slow start.


We start in an empty vault, moving through halls and rooms showing a little more of a modern (something Mike Brady might design) look than we've seen in other vaults, but mostly the same robots and computers. A lot of radioactive glow with posters lining the walls like the one above, vault citizens lifting up Uncle Sam with "It's Time To Do Your Part" old-timey pioneers with pip-boys "A New America for A New World" yada-yada.

Then right as the music swells we're outside, there's a flash of blinding light from the sun and you hear the explosions before you can see the neat, shiny white families (and like one black one) in their vault suits with just the most ridiculous technology launching mini-nukes at tribe camps. We keep sweeping over the scene outside and there's clearly nuclear devices that instantly demolish apartment buildings full of non-feral ghouls and build a nice little suburban house with a white-picket fence and a Mr. Handy flame-throwing the few ghouls that survived and started to escape.

The whole image pulls out to give an overview of a valley with small explosions and laser fire until almost nothing is really visible. "It's your turn to truly make America great again!" as a mushroom cloud engulfs the scene.

THAT is a sandbox I would fuck with.
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Mongrel
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Re: Fallout

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:49 pm

Well, no NPCs other than robots and zombies seems to be raising a LOT of questions as to how in the hell THAT'S going to work.

Then there's the usual plethora of Bethesda bugs (only without mods to fix them and a multiplayer experience to bone you), the generally worsening weakness of the series overall (most people I know will comment that F4 was worse than F3), and a shift to a game mode that Bethesda has zero experience with and which seems calculated to belatedly chase a hot trend.

As mentioned, there will be no mods allowed (obviously), but also microtransactions aplenty, both of which will improve the experience of a Bethesda game, I'm sure.

Oh and players can nuke huge areas of the map. As in find and unlock nuclear silos and launch nuclear missiles at each other. No way could THAT go wrong in a shared world.
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Mongrel
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Re: Fallout

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:51 pm

If the game was as Beat's describing, that would genuinely be interesting.

I am not hopeful that this will be the case.

The poster I don't give two shits about. Could mean anything - I wouldn't really base my opinions on F76 based on that one image.
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Joxam
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Re: Fallout

Postby Joxam » Thu Jul 12, 2018 6:18 pm

Mongrel wrote:Oh and players can nuke huge areas of the map. As in find and unlock nuclear silos and launch nuclear missiles at each other. No way could THAT go wrong in a shared world.


PVP is opt in. See what I mean about people not listening to what the devs say.
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Re: Fallout

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jul 12, 2018 6:32 pm

Joxam wrote:
Mongrel wrote:Oh and players can nuke huge areas of the map. As in find and unlock nuclear silos and launch nuclear missiles at each other. No way could THAT go wrong in a shared world.


PVP is opt in. See what I mean about people not listening to what the devs say.

Isn't this a region targeting thing? I wasn't even thinking of it in terms of killing players or destroying other players' stuff so much as just destroying huge parts of the map and creating a pile of nasty mob spawns (nuke strike areas become tagged such that they spawn the toughest enemies).

Direct PVP doesn't need to be a part of general griefing. The devs haven't said a damn thing about the effects on the landscape if you launch a nuke at a technically-unclaimed areas with no players in it.
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mharr
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Re: Fallout

Postby mharr » Thu Jul 12, 2018 6:45 pm

I recall Shamus Young's E3 reaction being that "Nothing Todd Howard says here makes me think they understand the problem they’re trying to solve." If there are nukes, and no mods or private servers I figure the best case scenario as a first person Fallout themed game of Diplomacy.

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Mongrel
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Re: Fallout

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:48 pm

I mean, they clearly intend for players to be nuke-happy, because one of the themes of this Fallout is that yes, it's after the bombs fell, but the world isn't actually an irradiated wasteland yet - there are plants and green regions, and possibly non-mutated animals. It's more like an "ordinary" world.

The secondary nuke wars between early-exiting vault dwellers are now the in-world explanation of why the Fallout world is such a completely blasted hellscape. The "story" of Fallout 76 is how we went from a world which had suffered a nuclear war to a world which had been absolutely devastated by pointless repeated nuclear conflicts.

There's some sort of philosophical sniggering in the elegance of having it such that PVP players griefing each other is the literal explanation for the apocalypse, I'm just not sure if Bethesda has fully thought about the joke all the way through. Hell, I'm not even really sure who's getting who necessarily.


mharr wrote:I recall Shamus Young's E3 reaction being that "Nothing Todd Howard says here makes me think they understand the problem they’re trying to solve." If there are nukes, and no mods or private servers I figure the best case scenario as a first person Fallout themed game of Diplomacy.

I don't think some people understand how big "no mods" is for a Bethesda game. They haven't been capable of making an actual functioning game on their own in decades, if ever (lol Daggerfall). What isn't broken is half-finished, and what isn't half finished are still left as bizarre vestigial code remnants to trip over. Mods both fix Bethesda games to make them playable and provide the real content which makes them memorable.
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Mongrel
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Re: Fallout

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:52 pm

I mean, I take it back, if it turns out you can't launch nukes at all unless everyone on the server (individual server pops will be relatively small to preserve the "sparse" feeling of Fallout) agrees to turn on PVP, or they make it even simpler and there will be both PVP and non-PVP servers. But I haven't seen any information that detailed yet anywhere.
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Grath
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Re: Fallout

Postby Grath » Fri Jul 13, 2018 12:48 am

Mongrel wrote:I mean, I take it back, if it turns out you can't launch nukes at all unless everyone on the server (individual server pops will be relatively small to preserve the "sparse" feeling of Fallout) agrees to turn on PVP, or they make it even simpler and there will be both PVP and non-PVP servers. But I haven't seen any information that detailed yet anywhere.

The only anti-griefing tech they've committed to so far is "you are allowed to play single-player".

If there aren't private servers, I'm not buying it.

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Mongrel
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Re: Fallout

Postby Mongrel » Fri Jul 13, 2018 1:11 am

Grath wrote:
Mongrel wrote:I mean, I take it back, if it turns out you can't launch nukes at all unless everyone on the server (individual server pops will be relatively small to preserve the "sparse" feeling of Fallout) agrees to turn on PVP, or they make it even simpler and there will be both PVP and non-PVP servers. But I haven't seen any information that detailed yet anywhere.

The only anti-griefing tech they've committed to so far is "you are allowed to play single-player".

If there aren't private servers, I'm not buying it.

Wait... I thought there wasn't going to be single player at all? Did they "cave"?

Or is the option just to play solo on a multiplayer server with no company other than the robots and ghouls and none of the multiplayer content actually working?
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Blossom
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Re: Fallout

Postby Blossom » Fri Jul 13, 2018 2:15 am

There is not a solo mode. "You are allowed to play single-player" means you're allowed to not group up with people. Since 100% of all humans in the game are players, with zero npcs, that doesn't leave much, no. Since apparently it is entirely possible to kill players who don't want to do pvp - there's just a limit that players below level 5 are flagged pvp-immune - the anti-griefing tech they have committed to is basically "nothing".

Bethesda and "not getting it" seems to be a big thing. I was referring to the major tonal issues with their installments, before.

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Mongrel
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Re: Fallout

Postby Mongrel » Fri Jul 13, 2018 2:31 am

F4 was just garbage in so many ways. Continuing a longstanding and ever-worsening Bethesda trend, there's literally no meaningful choices a player can make which have any effect on the story (except maybe in the DLC... and even that's debatable).
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