Fallout 76 FTP Weekend Steam

[Justisaur]

Fallout 76 FTP Weekend on Steam

I'm downloading it now. I know about all the hate, but it's fallout and if it's free even just for the weekend I've got to try it.

Unfortunately it's 56 GB to download!

- Justisaur

[Ant]

FTP = File Transfer Protocol? :P

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[Justisaur]

On Friday, May 15, 2020 at 8:00:47 PM UTC-7, Ant wrote:
> FTP = File Transfer Protocol? :P

Free To Play :|

> Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Fallout 76 FTP Weekend on Steam
>
> > I'm downloading it now. I know about all the hate, but it's fallout and if it's free even just for the weekend I've got to try it.
>
> > Unfortunately it's 56 GB to download!
>

I've been playing it today *shrug* seems like a Fallout mixed with some MMO
stuff. As usual with Bethesda games it's been running like a slide show
whenever I turn or go in/out of pip boy - I even have it down on medium and
turned down a couple other dials. Comparing it Outer Worlds it's a pretty
ugly boring world with ugly monsters.

I was a bit worried about PVP, but no issues so far. You can play it on a
private world so you don't have to worry about PVP if you want - up to 8
people can play on one world.

VATS is a bit harder to use since there's no time dilation, but with the
concentrated fire perk you can choose hit locations still. I've been popping
radical's heads off (kind of like raiders but get the impression you can join
them fairly easy.)

It's also harder to heal yourself in battle. Actually I think both those
changes help the game. I've died 3 times, no big deal though, you can respawn
not far, you keep your armor and weapons, just loose all your other stuff
which is in a bag where you died you have to pick up.

The crafting/building seems very similar to FO4. I've been doing some, but
not extensively, just enough to get by.

The food/water bars are a bit annoying, and if you leave the game and come
back even a few minutes later you're completely hungry & thirsty. I haven't
actually run out of either, but came close early, and have had to collect
dirty water, boil water & make tea so I have something to drink that's not
going to load me up on rads.

Overall it seems a bit too easy, I'd place it about playing FO4 on normal
maybe, perhaps easier.

I'm enjoying it so far, but not so much that I'll buy it after the free
weekend is over. Maybe eventually on deep discount if nothing else is calling
my name. I only stopped to wright this as their servers went down for
maintenance, seems a bad time to pick to do that - noon on a Saturday. Oh
well, I need to get lunch anyway.

- Justisaur

[JAB]

I've read so many bad things about it and also didnt enjoy FO:4 so I
didn't even bother to download it.

[Justisaur]

On Saturday, May 16, 2020 at 12:13:23 PM UTC-7, Justisaur wrote:
> On Friday, May 15, 2020 at 8:00:47 PM UTC-7, Ant wrote:
> > FTP = File Transfer Protocol? :P
>
> Free To Play :|
>
> > Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Fallout 76 FTP Weekend on Steam
> >
> > > I'm downloading it now. I know about all the hate, but it's fallout and if it's free even just for the weekend I've got to try it.
> >
> > > Unfortunately it's 56 GB to download!
> >
>
> I've been playing it today *shrug* seems like a Fallout mixed with some MMO
> stuff. As usual with Bethesda games it's been running like a slide show
> whenever I turn or go in/out of pip boy - I even have it down on medium and
> turned down a couple other dials. Comparing it Outer Worlds it's a pretty
> ugly boring world with ugly monsters.

I found a fix that worked for me for the slide show. Go into nvidia control
panel and create a profile for Fallout 76... seems weird that did it. It set
all my settings way down in the game, I've been slowly upping them to see if
it changes, so far working.

It's still ugly but I'm starting to get used to it. Boring a bit less, I
found one side quest that had an interesting and fairly funny thing happen -
I'll spoil it at the end.

> I was a bit worried about PVP, but no issues so far. You can play it on a
> private world so you don't have to worry about PVP if you want - up to 8
> people can play on one world.
>

I'm still not real sure what the point of the online play is - while the world
isn't large, still people are usually spread out and doing their own thing,
and there's only 8 people in each 'world.' I've run a couple events where
people showed up. No one's done so much as talk to me though. If it was an
MMO and there was some point to teaming up maybe? It's like the worst bits of
an MMO and a single player game combined.

> VATS is a bit harder to use since there's no time dilation, but with the
> concentrated fire perk you can choose hit locations still. I've been popping
> radical's heads off (kind of like raiders but get the impression you can join
> them fairly easy.)
>

> It's also harder to heal yourself in battle. Actually I think both those

> changes help the game. I've died 3 times, no big deal though, you can respawn.

I found there's a quick menu that makes switching weapons and using healing
items & chems a lot easier, you favorite items in your inventory and they
appear there.

> The crafting/building seems very similar to FO4. I've been doing some, but
> not extensively, just enough to get by.

I'd add caps seem to be very hard to come by, selling stuff to NPC vendors
doesn't seem to get you much, you do get a some from quests. Most items are
sold around 1 cap, while buying them can be hundreds or thousands. There's
vendors other players can put up, but since I don't have much I haven't really
looked into it. I haven't really had to buy anything so far, but bought a few
plans for exorbitant prices.

> The food/water bars are a bit annoying, and if you leave the game and come
> back even a few minutes later you're completely hungry & thirsty. I haven't
> actually run out of either, but came close early, and have had to collect
> dirty water, boil water & make tea so I have something to drink that's not
> going to load me up on rads.

I've got more food than I know what to do with now, I'm selling most of it to
NPCs now.. for 1 cap. Rad away is always in short supply since most food
gives you a dose, and even collecting dirty water to boil and make other
drinks from gives you 5 each. I've found some purified water but not enough
to keep me from having to get dirty water. I could probably try using some
rad-x and collecting a bunch of dirty water from a pump or stream, but I don't
have the patience to sit there clicking and waiting more than 10-20 times.

> Overall it seems a bit too easy, I'd place it about playing FO4 on normal
> maybe, perhaps easier.

Actually I'd probably say this is the easiest Fallout I've played so far on
any difficulty.

> I'm enjoying it so far, but not so much that I'll buy it after the free
> weekend is over. Maybe eventually on deep discount if nothing else is calling
> my name. I only stopped to wright this as their servers went down for
> maintenance, seems a bad time to pick to do that - noon on a Saturday. Oh
> well, I need to get lunch anyway.
>

I'm starting to get into it, I'm almost considering buying it, it's on sale
for $30, but it still seems pretty shallow for that, I'd probably buy it at
the $15 price point.

One thing I really miss from the SP games are the recrutable NPCs - she would've been perfect for that. I assume they don't have them because it's MP.

Spoiler for the funny & interesting side quest.
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It's just a bit of the quest, but at one point you rescue an assaultron, well, it's head, which still speaks. You can use her head as a weapon as it has a laser eye, unfortunately the head is a pretty bad weapon, or it's bugged or something - it puts up damage numbers in the hundreds - seen one over 300, but for some reason that didn't kill ghouls with that, where my rifle was doing around 50 and killed them in a couple shots.

Unfortunately you lose her head when you complete that section of the quest, you can get her a replacement body, but she just hangs out at the bar after that.

- Justisaur

[Spalls Hurgenson]

I'm in the same boat.

I don't think I'd hate Fallout 76, at least not at this point. It
looks like, with the addition of NPCs, you can finally enjoy the game
in a vaguely-single-player type of experience, ignoring most of the
MMO aspects and pretending its just another Fallout game. And given
I've put several hundred hours into Fallout 3, New Vegas and Fallout
4, that shouldn't be a bad thing.

But, see, I've already put several hundred hours into those previous
three games, and there's nothing about Fallout 76 that seems to really
stand out compared to its predecessors. Better graphics? Well, that's
nice, but not as much of a draw as it used to be. New areas to
explore? Always a plus - I love huge games where I can just wander -
but the Fallout games always felt very cut-n-paste with their maps.
God knows its not Fallout's setting or world-design; the whole
faux-50s shtick grew tiresome by the end of Fallout 3, but Bethesda
kept doubling-down on it and now I'm sick of it. Certainly its not the
gameplay; the combat was always my least favorite part of Bethesda
games, and the stories and dialogue were passable, but in no way
fascinating.

Still, I don't think I'd dislike the experience; it may not be
invigorating gameplay, but it passes the time. But it has no real
draw; nothing that makes me want to download 56GB, create a Bethesda
account, and pull myself into a brand new world... especially if I'm
going to be yanked out of it after 48 hours.

I might as well just play Fallout 3 again. I'd get pretty much the
same experience, with a much smaller footprint on the hard-drive, and
without the pressure of having to see as much as I can within a
publisher-enforced deadline.

[Justisaur]

It's still going on for today. I could certainly see myself playing it as a
relaxing 'build a camp' & wander around exploring and killing type game, but
the world looks pretty small, and yeah, it mostly just makes me want to play
FO4 again.

I'm finding the weight limits pretty annoying. You can't load up your
companion as you don't get one. I always end up modding those limits up or
adding weight expanding backpacks in SP, but I can't do that either. If I
were to buy it, I'd probably have to go with some picks that made me a mule.

I'm up to 21 hours, and I've only had the one 'feels like fallout' mission,
there's a few semi- interesting NPCs I've run across besides the one I mentioned, but nothing so far like FO3, or even FO4 besides that one.
(and nowhere near the original 2.)

I also ran across 1 unkillable nasty NPC. Fortunately he wouldn't attack me.

- Justisaur

[Justisaur]

On Monday, May 18, 2020 at 10:13:53 AM UTC-7, Justisaur wrote:

Well, after my horrible experience with GTA:O I was pining for Fallout and bought 76 after all. $30 is not bad for what it is, but really only a reasonable price for a die-hard Fallout fan like myself.

- Justisaur

[Justisaur]

On Wednesday, May 20, 2020 at 2:01:22 PM UTC-7, Justisaur wrote:
> On Monday, May 18, 2020 at 10:13:53 AM UTC-7, Justisaur wrote:
>
> Well, after my horrible experience with GTA:O I was pining for Fallout and bought 76 after all. $30 is not bad for what it is, but really only a reasonable price for a die-hard Fallout fan like myself.
>

I'm feeling I got burned. Storage space is very limited, you can only have
800 lbs of stuff in your stash which it turns out isn't that much. Unless you
decide to go for a subscription at $99 a year, then you can have an unlimited
stash.

There's a lot of other stuff that's pretty frustrating too, they've turned it
into a bit of a grind since both junk and monsters respawn and certain
monsters drop things randomly, it's more like a typical MMO grind-fest.

I'm right on the edge of quitting again. I'm going to say not worth it, unless
you don't mind paying their subscription.

- Justisaur

[Spalls Hurgenson]

On Wed, 27 May 2020 06:50:11 -0700 (PDT), Justisaur
<just...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I'm feeling I got burned. Storage space is very limited, you can only have
>800 lbs of stuff in your stash which it turns out isn't that much. Unless you
>decide to go for a subscription at $99 a year, then you can have an unlimited
>stash.

Yeah, that would annoy the shit outta me too. I've always hated
inventory restrictions. Except in the most extreme cases, they aren't
realistic and they rarely add more to gameplay than add unnecessary
grind and complexity. You always end up running back and forth from
the stash; it's a cumbersome mechanic and rarely fun. It is frequently
one of the first limitations I ease in any CRPG (there's a great mod
for Skyrim, for instance, that lets you add backpacks and beltpouches
to greatly increase your carrying capacity, and everyone knows that
the true usefulness of followers are that they make great mules).

So sticking with a limited carry inventory but then further limiting
your stash - that's the ultimate in greediness working against game
design. When you already have so many things working against your game
- as does Fallout 76 - you'd think that's one of the first
restrictions they'd remove. Oh, Bethesda.

[Rin Stowleigh]

On Wed, 27 May 2020 06:50:11 -0700 (PDT), Justisaur
<just...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, May 20, 2020 at 2:01:22 PM UTC-7, Justisaur wrote:
>> On Monday, May 18, 2020 at 10:13:53 AM UTC-7, Justisaur wrote:
>>
>> Well, after my horrible experience with GTA:O I was pining for Fallout and bought 76 after all. $30 is not bad for what it is, but really only a reasonable price for a die-hard Fallout fan like myself.
>>
>
>I'm feeling I got burned. Storage space is very limited, you can only have
>800 lbs of stuff in your stash which it turns out isn't that much. Unless you
>decide to go for a subscription at $99 a year, then you can have an unlimited
>stash.

That's seriously fucked up, the actual storage that game inventory
uses is negligible, we're talking a difference of a few kilobytes at
most. Unless there's some sort of weird crafting in this game that
enables you to create custom things with embedded media or something?

I can see charging more for premium game features that actually cost
more to create or support, but inventory storage? Really?

A few weeks back I bought Fallout 76 after seeing Youtube vids that it
had improved since first release and might be worth a look. The
visuals were so sub-par that I submitted a refund request literally
after about 5 minutes of play. It was clear to me it will never be
anything more than a stinker.

[Justisaur]

On Wednesday, May 27, 2020 at 11:25:13 AM UTC-7, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Wed, 27 May 2020 06:50:11 -0700 (PDT), Justisaur
> <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I'm feeling I got burned. Storage space is very limited, you can only have
> >800 lbs of stuff in your stash which it turns out isn't that much. Unless you
> >decide to go for a subscription at $99 a year, then you can have an unlimited
> >stash.
>
> Yeah, that would annoy the shit outta me too. I've always hated
> inventory restrictions. Except in the most extreme cases, they aren't
> realistic and they rarely add more to gameplay than add unnecessary
> grind and complexity. You always end up running back and forth from
> the stash; it's a cumbersome mechanic and rarely fun. It is frequently
> one of the first limitations I ease in any CRPG (there's a great mod
> for Skyrim, for instance, that lets you add backpacks and beltpouches
> to greatly increase your carrying capacity, and everyone knows that
> the true usefulness of followers are that they make great mules).

There is a craftable backpack, but it's only 10 lbs. I assume you can craft more. There's perks that lower the weight of things, but those take away from your combat ability perks. Same with lockpicking & hacking which are now perks.

Weirdly you can switch out perks if you have the 'cards' for it, so you can swap those in as needed, but as you mostly pick them up at level up it means delaying combat perks.

> So sticking with a limited carry inventory but then further limiting
> your stash - that's the ultimate in greediness working against game
> design. When you already have so many things working against your game
> - as does Fallout 76 - you'd think that's one of the first
> restrictions they'd remove. Oh, Bethesda.

I reread it, the unlimited stash is only for crafting materials, while that
would free up a a bit of space, it's still not truly unlimited.

You end up scrapping most things, and after scrapping the crafting materials
don't weigh much, so as long as you keep track of where crafting tables are
while you're adventuring you can take everything there to scrap, but it's a
lot of inventory management which isn't why I play games. I'm starting to
figure out just sell everything you don't use regularly, including extras of
stimpacks, but it makes my inner virtual hoarder sad.

Ammo weighs a bit, and unlike previous games you can't either scrap* it or
sell it, so all you can do is either use guns you aren't optimized for to use
it up or just dump it. If you use guns you aren't optimized for that means
another weapon (or more) taking up weight in your inventory or stash, and
weapons weigh a lot.

*Not able to scrap ammo? Come on!?! If you can make ammo, you should certainly
be able to at least salvage the lead, which is the most difficult component of
ammo to find in game.

On top of all this there's apparently daily limits on how much caps you can
get from selling things, a low 1400. I haven't run into that yet, but I could
certainly see it at higher level on a weekend where I play all day. Some
people are saying they run into that after playing for an hour or so.

It's more just venting for me at this point, I'm semi at peace that this game
is by far the worst fallout, but I continue to play it. I'm even finding that
sub tempting, but really don't want to reward this kind of crap, and somewhat
wish I hadn't bought the game for the same reason, though I've got more than
my money's worth.

- Justisaur