Fallout 76

The disappointment is real.

So, you can call us pessimists, but here are the issues:
Fallout as a game set has been built on single player immersion and story experience that creates a certain future noire feel. The shooter transition worked, because they kept the single story driven aspect intact and had things like VATS to keep an RPG feel to it.

So instead of spending all this effort on carefully crafted quests and story, we are getting a big sandbox with a bunch of random mindless monsters to farm for FedEx quests or crafting, and a bunch of PvP and griefing going on. This setup does not fit Fallout's core audience or design. And worse, its been a proven failure with games like Rust, Conan Exiles, and Ark. Worse yet, Bethesda has not managed to put out a game that's even fully functional without the mod community bailing their asses out and somehow we are supposed to believe they can manage an in house MMO lite on a two year development cycle from FO4 and that is not going to be a total shitfest? The nuke griefing is just piling on at this point (though its clear the Bethesda rep has a big hardon for it). And dedicated server only play means they will pull the plug on this after five years to either kill it or release Fallout77 (ala Destiny 2), so no going back and replaying it even if it has a story, unless someone has a dedicated server for it (PC Master Race Only I guess).And finally, anyone who liked the crafting in FO4 is going to quit instantly the first time Teabagger69 launches a nuke at their carefully constructed base, simply because that's all catass griefers do in these games. Seriously, did none of these assholes monitor what went on in Conan Exiles?

You know what the core audience for this game is, but they still showed nothing but PvP (and a lot of ganking at that) instead of ANYTHING to remotely show some sort of RPG elements or even an in game stat system to suggest that this is anything more than a sand box shooter with crafting tossed in. Seriously, anything resembling a populated quest hub with active NPCs would have gone a long way towards avoiding the backlash they are getting right now. A simple character creator shot at some point? Did anyone even see the word Perk or Special drop in any of the presser or screenshots? This is a Dust ripoff with a Fallout skin, turd polished with a John Denver song to try and sucker some people in, plain and simple.

You know how you actually make Fallout work as an MP game? Town bar go in look to connect with other survivors to help with a mission (rando procedural raider fights, hand crafted quests, or whatever) so players connect to run hand designed instanced content (think Dark Souls coop to an extent) with friends. Even let people drop help wanted ques at the bar and get a message on their Pip Boy to join the coop so they can do their immersive experience and then hop in when someone is around. But that requires actual fucking effort, unlike pasting a bunch of Sloth Monsters into a woods and letting people gank each other in a sandbox.

PS - While I am thinking of it, why the fuck is the WV area so well wooded with intact forests and shit when this game is sooner after the nuclear war than the other games and WV is a main target of enemy nukes? Did they literally just take a bunch of shit from their Elder Scrolls design board and put pretty forests in the game for the fuck of it? Every other FO game has a bleak apocalyptic teaser intro, but we got a fucking Country Roads with Tbagging in the WV hills were the leaves turn pretty in the fall. What the fuck were they thinking.

Country Roads alone makes me want to play this game though, I fucking love that song.