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Paranoid ramblings of a bear about Fallout 76
7 years ago
I'm slowly digesting the news that's come out about Fallout 76 and while I remain optimistic about it... Part of me sees a secondary reason for some of the changes.
Yes, Multiplayer is popular, yes battle royal and persistent/survival-based games are popular right now and they are /very/ easy to make. You take a large map, lots of generic craftables, gatherable resources and plop it all down then let players do all the work from there. It's the game equivalent of reality TV. So yes... I imagine there will quite possibly be even less story in the game despite the larger map size.
However, there is another element. See multiplayer games need to be balanced... fair and cheater free so part of that is certified code and exes… So, no more FOSE no more Nexus Mods. No non-certified mods at all in fact, but they probably will keep the creation club.
All in all, this could very well be the setup for an entire ecosystem whereby Bethesda provide very little themselves but then make a fortune off mod authors submitting content for approval and sale on the CC and Beth occasional drops in a minor expansion or two.
Sadly, I don't think I can justify pre-ordering this as the possibilities for this going horribly wrong and turning into ARK or Conan with a Fallout skin are just far to high.
Yes, Multiplayer is popular, yes battle royal and persistent/survival-based games are popular right now and they are /very/ easy to make. You take a large map, lots of generic craftables, gatherable resources and plop it all down then let players do all the work from there. It's the game equivalent of reality TV. So yes... I imagine there will quite possibly be even less story in the game despite the larger map size.
However, there is another element. See multiplayer games need to be balanced... fair and cheater free so part of that is certified code and exes… So, no more FOSE no more Nexus Mods. No non-certified mods at all in fact, but they probably will keep the creation club.
All in all, this could very well be the setup for an entire ecosystem whereby Bethesda provide very little themselves but then make a fortune off mod authors submitting content for approval and sale on the CC and Beth occasional drops in a minor expansion or two.
Sadly, I don't think I can justify pre-ordering this as the possibilities for this going horribly wrong and turning into ARK or Conan with a Fallout skin are just far to high.
Todd Howard: "Of course, you can play it solo."
https://youtu.be/eLiwrvso7kw?t=325
"You'll be in a world with dozens, not hundreds and not thousands of other players."
"You'll be able to join your friends whenever you want and all of your progression goes with you."
https://youtu.be/eLiwrvso7kw?t=397
About PvP, co-op and singleplayer.
And so on.
My only hope is that FO76 has a proper offline mode that can be modded. A wide open world full of nothing sounds like a pretty good slate for modders to sink their teeth into. Since it seems to be using the Creation Engine, I don't see mods being an impossibility if all you want to play is single player. Hopefully, Bethesda isn't so short sighted that they'd lock down the game to online only. But yeah, without mods, I can't see FO76 as anything more than a shell experience of FO4.
Best case scenario is that Bethesda eventually allows for unofficial servers, and that they treat FO76 like ARK - has both offline and online play, and unofficial servers can be modded.