Fallout 76

[Strikerkc]

Eh, it's a game series that's been around for just over two decades. Art direction and the exact models and lore behind things change over time. while it can be amusing for me to spot them, contemplate them, and imagine reasons for them, at the end of the day, I'm not going to get wrapped around an axle about them one way or another.

FEV was only made and tested in one location, which was destroyed in fallout 1. But we have super mutants on the east coast stealing people and dipping them into FEV in later games. DO I want the super mutants taken out of those later games? hell no, they're a great part of the world.

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel had power armor and advanced power armors that looked like techno daemons, and we don't have that any more, though that game is the basis for all of our Brotherhood interactions we have on the east coast. some things get used, some things change.

I'd rather my game designers have the creative leeway to love things from previous iterations of a game, but to still change develop or (within the context of their own games) rewrite history a bit.

 

[Kerr Avon]

FEV was only made and tested in one location, which was destroyed in fallout 1. But we have super mutants on the east coast stealing people and dipping them into FEV in later games. DO I want the super mutants taken out of those later games? hell no, they're a great part of the world.

Where does it explicitly state that FEV was made in one location to the exclusion of others? There's a facility in F76 with vats and a location that was intentionally infected with FEV for testing purposes. Unless you can find me a bit of text in game from the other games that says it was exclusively at one location and one location only, there's no reason to believe it wasn't being tested elsewhere. Just because other games didn't indicate it was used elsewhere doesn't mean it wasn't. There's really no break in canon there. Again, the only canon that we know for a fact was the creation of Jet was by one person, at one location, and it can't be found until F2.

 

[Kerr Avon]

It would be much more fun if it worked right, all the time, like OTHER video games do. I don't like the game crapping on my good time. Don't offer me a good game, and then crash me out over and over. I wanna play the god **** game, not look at the main menu over and over again.

Witcher 3 is pretty much universally rated as one of the best if not the best video game ever made. Let's look at some of the notable and hilarious glitches in game.

Nothing's perfect. But a lot of the issues in game can be directly attributed to things that people like dupers, or people carrying around hundreds of thousands of items and 30 tons of materials. Once Bethesda finishes dealing with those kinds of issues, server stability will likely be greatly improved. I've personally suffered extremely few crashes also, so you may want to consider making sure you have the most up to date drivers available for your hardware too. It'll just keep getting better.

 

[Kerr Avon]

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel had power armor and advanced power armors that looked like techno daemons, and we don't have that any more, though that game is the basis for all of our Brotherhood interactions we have on the east coast. some things get used, some things change.

I think F:BOS isn't considered canon as a game, but I could be wrong on that.

 

[Strikerkc]

Nah, certainly not as "much" cannon as the main RPG games, but the whole premise behind the east coast brotherhood even existing in fallout 3, being the way they are, the outcasts being the way they are, and even the existence of the Prydwyn in fallout 4, are lifted directly from the story of F:BOS.

if I recall, the FEV thing was that the facility in 1 was put forth as the place where all the research and testing was being done, because of the potential hazards. The ending credits also state that with the destruction of the vats, the threat of super mutants is removed. Even leading to plot lines in following games where super mutants were trying to cure their streility, because the FEV was all gone.

That's obviously gone by the wayside in following games, which doesn't hurt my feelings. I think New vegas referenced that the "super mutant colony" (or whatever it was) would still occasionally turn people into mutants (or at least had enough capability to do so that they had to promise folks on the radio that they wouldn't), plus the large number of super mutants in that game would make you think there must still be some FEV someplace. Fallout 3 had mutants way on the east coast at least some of which seem to have come from the enclave's forced FEV testing (Where Fawkes was created). Fallout 4 had a scientist that accidentally exposed himself to FEV and become a mutant (maybe his lab found samples, maybe his lab had the recipe and made it's own samples to study, who knows).

And from what you've said, it sounds like F76 has established the existence of some in the Virginias.

Would I want all that to be wiped from history because the ending to the first game said it couldn't happen? no. the games were fun, and made good use of plot elements from the previous ones (like FEV).

 

[Kerr Avon]

I think you could argue that the FEV thought to be gone was because that was the people in the region only knowing of the FEV vats from the Mariposa location in the first game. Even then, we know the FEV is out in the world and has pretty much infected everything, as no living people are 100% pure human anymore that haven't been in a Vault their entire life or in the Enclave bunkers. So I think West Tek's facility in F76 is reasonable as an extension without being completely contradictory.

 

[Kerr Avon]

For anyone confused by CAMP plan names and what you actually get for them, this guy has been working on a list of plans and what you get from them (WIP) I made a visual catalog matching C.A.M.P. assets with plan names

Grabbed a photo of me and Ghostminion while chatting about the game.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Couple layers, here. We know explicitly that Maxson's unit, before he was CO, was assigned to the WestTek facility near L.A. before they and the scientists they were guarding were moved to Mariposa Military Base for safety/isolation. They were there for a while, and I also have never seen anything saying that was the only location. Head scientist, yes. But it stands to reason to decentralize such research, and send the results/samples to other labs to keep things going in parallel in case something happens to one or more locations.

I'd have to re-dig into Fallout 3 and 4 for all the gleanable lore about FEV in those games. I know the Institute was studying it, but I can't remember for how long or where they got it. Etc.

Games, now. Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel are separate games.

The first is the one around Chicago, with the airship fleet sent East that ran into storms over the Rockies. A lot of what's in there, lore-wise, is tacitly canon unless and until overridden. The survivors of the airship that crashed in the game's prologue established themselves in the upper Midwest, inducted locals, and relaxed the appearance standards for their power armor. Other airships likely made it further East, and were the seeds of the East Coast Brotherhood encountered in the Capitol Wasteland.

The second is set in Texas and is a steaming turd that everyone ignores. Some of the not-stupid bits of lore in there might be considered worth keeping and may show up incorporated into the official canon, but I wouldn't bank on it.

 

[Strikerkc]

Come on man, you know we weren't talking about the ****** overhead run and gun shooter

 

[Strikerkc]

Oh, my GOD, I hope the decision makers behind this game burn in hell.

You can't even use the damn vendors half way intelligently.

So I'm sitting at home thinking "I've really only sold stuff to vendors, never really bought things, let me see if there are any plans I want"

log in. go to vendor. see that vendor has 200 caps, and a plan I want for $430 caps.

"Hmmm, well, that's more than I feel like spending at such a low level... you know what, I'll take the opportunity to sell off a bunch of spare stuff I have in trade for the plans. Ok, there's no 'barter my items for your items then commit to the sale' option anymore, vendor has $200 so I'll just have to buy the plan for $430, then I can sell $630 worth of stuff to him".

*buys $430 plan*
*vendor still only has $200*
"Mother, *******, ass holes."

 

[Kerr Avon]

The vendors cap out (pun intended) at 200 caps. There are 6 different factions of vendors you can sell stuff too, getting up to 1200 caps a day in total (Responder, BoS, Raider, Enclave, Whitespring, Free States). They cap the max you can get from them at a time at 200 I think to avoid people just becoming rich immediately by selling everything they find. They also share the same pool if they are in the same faction. So you can't go two two different Responder bots and get 400, you can only get 200 among the two. If you see a plan you want, stay on the same server and try visiting all the different factions then go back.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Also, sell stuff first, to deplete their cap level. Then buy to bump it back up (even though the algorithm that determines how many of the caps you spend show up in the vendor's available balance is stupid). Then sell again. Repeat until they're out of caps or you're out of stuff to sel

 

[zapwizard]

Yep, vendors are just another form of farming. For a while I was spending almost an hour per game just cycling around the vendors, and sorting what to sell. But once you have the neon letters and 8000 caps in the bank the vendors are only needed to top off funds.

 

[GhostMinion]

So...………...thoughts on today's update? Feels kinda weird that they removed the randomization of the plans/recipes from the vendors. Pretty much the final nail in the coffin for a real in game economy.

 

[zapwizard]

If the vendors were randomized over time it wouldn't have been so bad. But they made it so that many plans required you to server hop over and over. And on top of that, many plans also have min AND max level activation. Meaning if you didn't pick up 'x' plan at level 15, then you could never ever get that plan again. I had to have a friend get me the lever action rifle plan because I was too high level for it to appear. I don't need vendors to be a farming mini-game, just set the damn prices and make it so that getting enough caps is the game.

 

[GhostMinion]

If the vendors were randomized over time it wouldn't have been so bad. But they made it so that many plans required you to server hop over and over. And on top of that, many plans also have min AND max level activation. Meaning if you didn't pick up 'x' plan at level 15, then you could never ever get that plan again. I had to have a friend get me the lever action rifle plan because I was too high level for it to appear. I don't need vendors to be a farming mini-game, just set the damn prices and make it so that getting enough caps is the game.

I'll have to agree and disagree at the same time. Could they have tweeked it so the randomization was a bit more...…..realistic? Totally. But this? Too much. And raising the prices on rare plans five times the amount was not very cool either.

Further more, what the **** was the point of making the Ultracite Armor plans available from a terminal, yet they still drop from the queen? Why would they not have made some other prize from the queen? Now there's really no reward for fighting her, and so I figure what's the point?

With this game being RIDDLED with bugs, glitches, exploits, ect., they should be focusing on the problems at hand and not stuff that wasn't a problem in the first place. What total moron is making these decisions?

I'm sorry, I like this game a lot, but Bethesda should really never attempt to do this type of game again. They **** up more than they fix every time there's a patch. I'm trying hard to hang in there and roll with it, but it's starting to get very difficult...……...

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

I'm not calling anything final. Not just because of all the things that had been fixed that this patch re-broke. I'll keep going across the hall to Elder Scrolls Online for comparisons. It launched in April of 2014 (just for desktops, though -- console version launched over a year later... maybe shoulda done the reverse for Fallout 76?). It still has bugs now, but didn't really become worth playing until early 2017. And pretty regularly over the last three years, they've been adding new content (and I'm excited for what's coming up this year) and working to fix gameplay issues and performance glitches (arguably, to varying degrees of success).

This game has been out for two months. We have a massive revamp to gameplay and PvP coming up this March, as well as new content for gameplay (oddsmakers are pretty solidly split as to whether it'll be the vaults or the election). I have faith that, over the course of 2019, they'll get the weight of bobby pins sorted, potentially rework how perks are handled, repeatedly tweak how the vendors -- NPC and PC, both -- function, adjust food/water consumption further, expand C.A.M.P. budgets, fix item/enemy spawns (like Evan and the Nuka-Cola power armor paint plans), the Technical Data reward issues, and so on, and so on.

So yeah. I like that they fixed the players-being-invisible glitch, not so keen on the vendor inventory rework, do very much like that they have adjusted plans and recipes to show whether you already know them, don't like the ongoing weapon-damage/enemy-toughness balance issues... *shrug*

Overall, my gameplay is split between days when I set out to get something done -- this quest or that daily or whatever -- and days when I just farm/grind something, like tromping all over the map and back to get the dome 3 keys, only to have to server-hop a dozen times until my friend had a second set of Nuka-Cola paint plans finally spawn for her. Or doing the Ecological Balance daily, which involves traversing almost the entire Forest. Or doing a treasure map sweep. Or continuing my hunt for level-45 T-45 bits, or more level-50 T-51 bits (have the plan for the helmet, so that's no longer an issue, at least). I have plenty to keep me occupied until new content hits in a couple months, and in the meantime, I just keep rolling with the changes to the game as they sort stuff out.

Heck, they still haven't fixed that whole alien-blaster mini-quest, where the key is just out in a safe to be found, short-circuiting the entire thing. That's been an issue since B.E.T.A.

 

[GhostMinion]

Well, here comes another patch to fix the patch.

Let's see what gets broken this time...………

*sigh*

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Oh, hush. Just put on "Yaketty Sax", sit back, and enjoy the next few months.

 

[NormanF]

Oh, my GOD, I hope the decision makers behind this game burn in hell.

You can't even use the damn vendors half way intelligently.

So I'm sitting at home thinking "I've really only sold stuff to vendors, never really bought things, let me see if there are any plans I want"

log in. go to vendor. see that vendor has 200 caps, and a plan I want for $430 caps.

"Hmmm, well, that's more than I feel like spending at such a low level... you know what, I'll take the opportunity to sell off a bunch of spare stuff I have in trade for the plans. Ok, there's no 'barter my items for your items then commit to the sale' option anymore, vendor has $200 so I'll just have to buy the plan for $430, then I can sell $630 worth of stuff to him".

*buys $430 plan*
*vendor still only has $200*
"Mother, *******, ass holes."

What I hate is there must be a lot of tax or fees the vendors have to pay. I'll sell them a lot of stuff to get them down to 0 caps, then if I buy something for 400 caps they only end up with 60 caps. Also, pre-war money is not worth 1 cap anymore. In previous games I used to collect that stuff all the time.

I don't remember if I mentioned this, but after playing maybe four hours on the Beta I came to a realization. This is very similar to Defiance, only there isn't a TV show to back it up and no free ammo. It's just side missions and group events. That being said, it's not a bad game. It would be better if I had not pre-ordered it and saved half the cost. So it will probably be a while before I pre-order a game again. Wait, when does Cyberpunk come out?