Wow they've been dead silent on this? Surprisingly, I'm not surprised since Bethesda seems to not care most of the time.I believe Fallout 4 got its official roadmap in March 2016. I'm expecting a roadmap for 76 in the same time frame.
If we reach May, the six month anniversary, without a solid roadmap, I think it's pretty fair to say that the game is dead.
At the very least it'll be $10 by then.
They will NEVER, EVER get away with this. They can't just walk away from it now. No one will ever trust them again with the Fallout IP. Hell, I think this might even affect TES VI's sales as well. They are absolutely FUCKED.
I think the point is that Publishers don't really care about the public perception, as long as people are buying and playing the product, which they are with TESO, and they weren't before. Ultimately it doesn't really matter the perception of randoms is, it's a F2P game, the players are the customers. I'm sure they'd like it to be better, but they are still releasing content for it, so I'm sure they're satisfied.This really, really underscores my point, hahah. Initial reception is 80% of mindshare; "you only get one chance to make a first impression" and all that. There are few second chances in this crowded business.
This game could have so easily been saved with a proper roadmap, LIKE EVERY BASIC LIVE GAAS DOES, and proper resources but it truely does feel like the game was handed to a skeleton Live crew.
Their bug fixing priority is completely out of whack and inefficient. The game is woefully unbalanced and they nerf/buff as if none of them actually play the game. In 3 months they have achieved little in actually making more than a tiny % of weapons and skills viable because of their boneheaded enemy resistance design.
Worst of all, there is 1 end game activity that is insanely unbalanced and inconsistent. Not to mention the half thought out pvp and workshop system. With the inconsistent loot drops, (3 star legendaries and scorch queen beast dropping fuck all loot, you risk your server crashing at any moment losing all the resources/time/workshops you invest because they STILL haven't stabilized them. A situation made alot worse by the dupers who've run rampant breaking the in-game economy. Then to double down on their worst fucking feature and announce a new PVP mode instead of pve content was just so braindead. A mode where dupers will be allowed to bring their broken shit INTO IT because they can't detect them.
It's just insane how much wasted potential this game had. These idiots thought having poor community managers on Reddit constantly saying, we hear you and have passed on the feedback to the developers, would shut people up for more than a month.
They created an inventory simulator in the apocalypse. I wouldn't be surprised if upper management has just written it off and made them mostly move on.
From a business perspective, the thing I don't understand at all is their Atom Shop priority. Who thought it would be a good idea to offer fucking mailboxes and sleeping bags? What market testing did they do to determine that yes, this is what people want to buy? Meanwhile, basic shit like weapon skins haven't been added at all and are limited to 3 weapons.
As a current West Virginian, I think their condensed recreation of the state is really cool, and could have been used in an interesting way.I'm all for opinions but I would love to read the justification for giving Fallout 76 any sort of praise.
I tend to agree. The game has a fuckload of negative PR, but it also has a decent-sized install base, doesn't it? If it sold decently, and people didn't sell their copies back to Gamestop used, then enough positive buzz will get people to pull it off the shelf. Not to mention future sales, and even if people did sell their copies back to be resold as used, that creates a secondary market of people picking the game up used for cheap, and still getting involved in Beth's microtranstaction ecosystem, which was the entire moneymaking arm of the game to begin with, rather than pure sale dollars.I think that is going to be a very common strategy going forward. It used to be that any GaaS type of game would get pulled if it bombed out of the gate. But there are multiple examples of games that, through some combination of tweaks or massive sweeping reimagining, became hits long after being written off as dead. Elder Scrolls Online, Rainbow Six Siege, Fortnite, Warframe, even something like Hitman in a way, all wound up succeeding because they invested the time in after release to improve the product.
Now, for 76, the negative PR might just be too much to overcome. And it would take a LOT of smart decision making going forward. But it probably has a long leash, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them pump content and fixes into it for atleast a full year before considering changing things up. The people saying that it'll shut down or go free to play this year are completely out to lunch.
Yeah you can for sure. Imagine Fallout 4 with only combat and exploration (and some sorta annoying survial mechanics). If that sounds appealing to you, you'll have an alright time with it.Is it really that bad? Can't I squeeze in 20-25 hours of dumb combat/exploration fun? Is it worth a shot for around $15?
Also this, XIV was a technical marvel that just sucked to play. They had to rework the gameplay systems which while time consuming and difficult, is not as bad as needing to spend an ungodly amount of money literally creating a new engine to get the thing to work.
Copy pasted terrain isn't a technical issue.This is kind of misleading... Not saying f76 is better or worse than ffxiv was at launch, but to suggests it was a technical marvel is a tad hyperbolic...I remember 85% of the terrain was just copy pastad
I really hope the gaming public remembers this mess once the next Beth game comes out, stop ignoring the glaring issues they've had for years and both pre-orders and reviews reflect this fact. If 76 is to be the game that took the rose colored glasses off everyone in regards to Beth games, then it served its purpose.
Is it really that bad? Can't I squeeze in 20-25 hours of dumb combat/exploration fun? Is it worth a shot for around $15?
So many people and sites talking about the bugs. Am I the only one who find the conceptual design much worse than the bugs?
So many weird design choices this game is made of that I don't find any reason to play it, maybe apart from 'playing something remotely Fallout-esque with a friend online'. And this will definitely never be fixed.
Yeah you can for sure. Imagine Fallout 4 with only combat and exploration (and some sorta annoying survial mechanics). If that sounds appealing to you, you'll have an alright time with it.
You can. I think the problem is that 20-25 hours of dumb fun is the only thing you can get out of this. And if you never played Fallout 4, it's the superior experience.
They will NEVER, EVER get away with this. They can't just walk away from it now. No one will ever trust them again with the Fallout IP. Hell, I think this might even affect TES VI's sales as well. They are absolutely FUCKED.
FO4 was a full featured single player game. FO76 is an online game, and you can't release an online game without continual proper support for it. 6 months to announce any new content for an online game that was being sold for full price is a huge mistake. And with all the bad press they are still being silent?
I remembering it being a major controversy the team directly had to respond to. Still remember a old show called the bff report that ripped the game to shreds.Copy pasted terrain isn't a technical issue.
I wouldn't call it a marvel either, it was beautiful but it ran like ass for most people too.
This is all so dissapointing and has completely destroyed any faith I have in BGS as a studio. Fallout is a massive franchise, and 76 will probably be the only AAA title in the Fallout universe for at least ten years, if not more depending on what BGS does after ES:6. The fact that BGS was fine with this shit heap of a game being the last title linked to the franchise for the next decade is just pathetic.
I know I'm going to get crap here for this, but Bethesda should just cut and run, and this is coming from a sucker that bought the game at full price. The core gameplay loop is just too badly broken to salvage. Adding additional content isn't going to fix that.
I think the point is that Publishers don't really care about the public perception, as long as people are buying and playing the product, which they are with TESO, and they weren't before. Ultimately it doesn't really matter the perception of randoms is, it's a F2P game, the players are the customers. I'm sure they'd like it to be better, but they are still releasing content for it, so I'm sure they're satisfied.
I don't think they will abandon the franchise. I think that it'll be about 10 years or more until Fallout 5 comes out. I'm guessing Starfield is 2021 or possibly even 2022 (for the bigger next gen install size) then ES:6 is at least 3 years after that. Which puts Fallout 5 3 years after that. That's 9-10 years. And that's assuming Fallout 5 is what they work on after Elder Scrolls. I could just as easily see them make Starfield 2 or another "non mainline" title in the Elder Scrolls or Starfield universe first.Are you not jumping to conclusions a bit? My views on Bethesda are definitely lower after how they've handled this game, but them abandoning the franchise would be an amazingly stupid move. Hell, I'm half wondering if Bethesda made this game so bad, people reconsidered their views on Fallout 4 (a bit of a base breaking game when it came out, wasn't it?) and thought, "Yeah, this game is pretty good, actually!" I can see them being quiet on Fallout for maybe a year or so, but with how many people love the franchise, the Fallout 76 controversy will HOPEFULLY spur them to make an awesome game in Fallout 5, or whatever Fallout project they do next.
And if Bethesda really does ditch Fallout and continue to be a self absorbed company who treats their fanbase like children (the "writing an essay so you don't get banned", really?), then is it really that bad that they abandon the franchise?
They don't care that there is a remaining stigma. You mentioned that some games are still the butt of jokes. NMS will never shake that, but the perception of the game as it is now, has changed.So they don't care about public perception, they only care about things that depend directly on public perception. Uh, OK? If a lot of people are buying and playing TESO, then obviously perception has changed, which I'm glad for.
I guess MMOs lend themselves to this kind of turnaround because people expect them to get better over time due to their very nature. Insofar Fallout 76 is kind of sort of like an MMO, the situation could be less hopeless for it than other games, but its reputation may have been stained beyond recovery.
From what I have seen of others' gameplay they were trying before launch. The aftermath is more dubious."Not possible" implies that Bethesda may have, at one point, actually cared to make the attempt.
I remembering it being a major controversy the team directly had to respond to. Still remember a old show called the bff report that ripped the game to shreds.
Check from 8:30 onwards for the copy pasta segment. I think people forget how big a deal it was.
Exactly this.My opinion is that even if the game had 0 bugs/glitches and ran perfectly fine, it would still be a pretty bad game.
May be a bit early to say but Outer Worlds seems to be the Fallout in spirit we deserve and Bethesda will never deliver.I feel like they should put 76 out of its misery, apologize, and announce a New Vegas style Fallout game being done by a contracted developer.
It's never gonna happen(especially the last part), but it should.