Thread by @SuperSpacedad

So here's what I think about Fallout 76:

-There is a good game buried in there somewhere but Bethesda has no coherent vision for what that game is.

-The job of making a good game out of Fallout 76 should be offloaded to modders and private-custom player-run servers.

-The game's technical hitches and quality of life improvements should be addressed to a high degree before additional content is added. (As the new content could potentially break the game otherwise, as well as compound the unpleasant factors in the game.)

-PVP should be taken out COMPLETELY of the regular game. (Except for the PVP team-fight events, those are fine - and when you die during those you should not drop your junk.)

-There should be a spinoff mode to the game of PVP-only servers with their own separate balance & rules

-If the regular game is completely coop then ownership of controllable locations should be collectively shared - people should receive a portioned out amount of resource loot no matter who controls the location. (Which would also encourage defending strangers settlements.)

that also raises the question of what to do about people who use CAMP objects to block off entrances to places or who maliciously destroy your CAMP gear - I'm not really sure about that one, but merely killing them in PVP does nothing but make them respawn a little ways away

Example:

-my friends were in control of an ammo factory

-a guy who wanted to farm ammo was REALLY MAD at us for controlling that factory, so he kept destroying our shit

-we kept killing him as he was flagged for PVP when he would destroy stuff

-This went on for a full hour

-later the next time my friends and i were in control of the same factory we figured out we could just literally block every entrance with CAMP objects - anyone coming in would flag themselves if they tried to destroy them

-despite that, it was not fun do to this AT ALL

-it was not fun because it meant a toxic relationship to the other players on the server who want to use the resource farm we were using

-it was not fun because it meant babysitting our shit from griefers

-it was not fun because we made an area less accessible to players

The takeaway from that is there is a perfect storm of 'bad design decisions' in this game that make things unpleasant and unfun in a lot of ways. The stuff I outlined above in the scenario of territory control and pvp is one example.

Weight & item management is another.

As it stands right now:

-You can only carry about 1 or 2 weapons on you and your armor, and that puts you at nearly 60% or more weight limit.

-A lot of players run MAX STRENGTH builds with weight perk cards and they STILL have weight carry problems.

-Collecting cool items or power armor sets is out of the question - your stash limit of 400 (it will be raised to 600 on december 11th and apparently will be raised to more thereafter) is anemic and means you will be not storing away cool collectables virtually at all.

-The also game features...puzzling and completely absurd weight amounts for a lot of items. 1 pound each for stimpacks, weight on items under the 'misc' tab that you don't use for anything. Ammo weight amounts that quickly start to add up. 'Junk creep' that overwhelms inventory.

-On top of that, the poor interface you have to manage your items in the game makes hunting for whatever is weighing you down a pain. You can't sort stacked items by their collective weight, for example. (This is fixed in a player made mod apparently, btw.)

In reality it's three things that make weight management unpleasant:

-Poor balancing on what items actually weigh. (Game can't decide if it's being 'realism' or 'fun')
-Poor stash limit and personal weight carry amount.
-Poor interface and communication on weight & inventory.

This game revolves around items. It revolves around farming for materials to maintain those items. And it made the entire interface and management of those items a 'holistically bad' experience.

By 'holistically bad' experience - I mean bad in so many intersecting ways that it multiplies the unpleasantness.

If Fallout 76 were a fast-food diner, it would be full of roaches & rats, have rude slow cashiers, & your burger come out mostly uncooked with a dead rat in the box.

It is possible to fix these things - but the way that a lot of these problems intersect with each other makes it difficult to untangle them. Bethesda needed to have a clear vision of what it was trying to accomplish with this game to create a holistically good experience.

I'm honestly not going to put my faith in Bethesda to find that vision. I think the vision should be an emergent one created by the fans - this game SHOULD have had that in mind; it should have launched with fully moddable custom player-run dedicated servers being a thing.

'Build your own fallout and your own community servers the way you want' should have been the vision that Bethesda had from the start. That is where this game has the most potential. Give the full control over to the players and fans. 76 as a 'games as service' is a failure.

Anyway - i'm still gonna keep playign this game because in spite of everything - i do enjoy playing this cruddy game with my friends.

And i honestly think that's where the game is heading and bethesda knows it themselves - the private custom modded player servers route.

Oh and here's another 'vision' in which bethesda should invest going forward:

-Thinking of Fallout 76 as a 'party game' where friends hook up for an evening of fun and goofy activities to do.

This means that quest arcs & events should be designed around a partygamelike ethos.

By a 'partygame' style of play - I mean that a lot of events should be designed as self-contained minigame-ish events in and of themselves, with replay value and variation in how they can play out.

Think of something like how Jackbox games play out but using stuff unique to 76

Some examples:

-A target-shooting contest where friends test their skill against each other. (And may even shoot their friends who run downrange as living targets.)

-Event where your entire group is granted temporary mutations that change how the game plays.

-Events where you get to run scientific experiments on your friends, which play out like minigames themselves.

-A PVP gauntlet event where one team is trying to run through a dungeon and the opposing team respawns inside of the bodies of robots or monsters to attack players.

So - I believe there are TWO ways bethesda can wrangle a coherent vision of a good play experience for 76 in the future:

-Crafting a 'Partygame-like play experience' with quests/events crafted like having a boardgame night with pals

-Open up moddable player run custom servers

Also I want to add that there should be quality of life improvements to the current game for finding events.

-There should be an 'event list' tab that displays what events are currently active, and maybe ghosts out (with info) on inactive events.

-Clicking on or mousing-over an event should also include a descriptor of what it involves, what rewards the event gives, what stage of the event it is on, and how far into the event it is

-different icons for event types would also help - such as different icons for pvp events, workshop defense, or regular type event.

I've collected a Thread-Reader of my tweets in the below link with my thoughts on #Fallout76 and how it can be improved going forward.

I updated a new thread-reader article, and will keep creating new updated ones I add more thoughts to this thread:

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1067563…