[Edward64]

A beta tester report.

The 'Fallout 76' Beta Makes Me Sad

Once I cycled through the first few initial quests, I….simply never saw anyone again. Probably three of the four hours of the beta was completely devoid of other players. I hit level 5 and got the opportunity to PvP, but I didn’t, and no one else did either, judging by the fact that no one got themselves a Wanted bounty on my server. You can see where other people are on the map if you really want to find them, but I tried to just play Fallout 76 like it was…a Fallout game.

But while you can do that to a certain extent, because the multiplayer aspect of the game exists, that has come with certain tradeoffs. Some of these I don’t find to be a huge deal, like you can’t sleep to insta-heal and skip time anymore, you literally have to lie in bed for a spell until your health fills up (it doesn’t take that long, it’s fine).
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The worst is easily the lack of VATS. I say “lack” because the new system may as well not exist at all, but perhaps “the gutting of VATS” is a better phrase. As shown in certain previews, because the game is happening on a live server with other players, you cannot slow down time for VATS anymore for obvious reasons. But rather than scrapping the system entirely, it exists in this bizarre state where the percentages pop up in real time and you simply pull the trigger and your bullets will magically fly toward your target even if you’re not aiming at them directly. Not only does this look incredibly goofy in practice, but it’s not even effective, even after investing some Perception points into upgrades. The percentages change too fast in real time to be useful, and unless you are literally the world’s worst shooter player, you are probably better off just trying to manually hit the shots yourself.
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With live servers and multiplayer you also lose the ability to quicksave, which is something I didn’t even consider until the beta went live tonight. If reach certain areas or complete certain objectives you will get “checkpointed,” but you can no longer save exactly where you want, when you want, and dying will not return you to your last save, but instead some arbitrary checkpoint and you’ll have to trek back and get your dropped loot
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Finally, however, what we’ve given up the most for multiplayer here is…life. While Fallout’s worlds have always been desolate, Fallout 76’s Appalachia is on another level with the total removal of all speaking, non-enemy NPCs outside of robots. While this does feel like a Fallout game in many ways, especially many of the missions, there’s this constant void when you’re constantly receiving all your instruction through holotapes and computer screens.
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I guess that the other players are supposed to make the world feel more alive but A) again, this map is so sprawling you can easily not see anyone else forever and B) they still don’t communicate with you like NPCs would, and lord knows I don’t want to know what most randoms would say to me over open voice chat anyway.

And in other news, the California mod is out for FNV

Fallout: New California mod released for folks who crave single-player - Polygon