#beta thoughts

It’s boring. It’s like... okay... so, the graphics look... pretty much the same. The same facial structures, the same hairstyles. Nothing note-worthy at all about that. The controls are the same, which is to be expected in a franchised game. But... okay, let’s just make this easier on everyone. 

1. The World

It’s... Fallout 4 with color and leaves. To be blunt, it looks like Fallout 4 with a mod on it, nothing new... like... at all. Okay, so maybe one thing is new. The pip-boy, but technically that’s “old” compared to FO4. 

2. Caps and Loot

I’m hoping this is a BETA thing because wow... just... wow. Probably 80% of the containers/cabinets etc that I saw hubs open were empty. Nothing. There’s like... nothing there... caps are proving to be hard to come by which isn’t that big of a deal because there’s no one to buy anything from. 

3. NPC;s

Don’t exist. There aren’t any. The only “other people” that you deal with are robots and voice recordings. You don’t see anyone else outside enemies. The other people you see, are just that, other people. It’s an MMO, we all knew this, but damn... that’s... all. 

4. No Pause/Safe Place

Because it’s an MMO, you can’t pause the game. This, in itself, is nothing new. But... there’s no where ‘safe’. You have to hope you won’t be attacked when you’re changing your equipment, checking your stats, or agonizing over which Perk card you’re going to use. 

5. Perk Cards

What the actual fuck. Okay, so... the idea is that instead of a perk chart, you get perk cards and these cards can be leveled up (so they say). But... you can only equip a set amount of these cards (I think it’s 8, but don’t quote me). Now, these cards do show their information in a more clear and concise way than the perk chart did, and the cards are nothing to balk at but... you only have so many slots and you have to choose which ones you want to equip. Which... can be challenging when there’s no safe place for you to do that. 

6. C.A.M.P.

Your camp. It’s like a portable workshop... it gives you a little parcel of land that you can build on (provided you’ve found enough materials... took the hubs awhile just to find enough wood to build 4 floors and three walls). Now, you do have one safe storage option. Your stash. (Or, any container you build but don’t quote me there because that’s just what I’ve heard). Your stash is only accessible by you, if you look in someone else’s stash box, you’ll see your stash. So, that’s how that works. You only get one camp... and it costs you 5 caps to move it each time you want to. Oh, and, there were a few new things in the building menus, but a lot of them were locked because hubs wasn’t a high-enough level. But there were also a lot of the same stuff... was.. kind of expecting more new stuff... but whatever, they’ve only had three years. 

7. Content

So far, and this is just BETA so I’m praying they’ll have more content come release day but I doubt it. There’s... no story... there’s... nothing. You wake up in the vault, you leave... you’re supposed to find the Overseer. That’s it, so far. Nothing backing anything up, no clear line of what the goal is... not even a hint. The only thing that’s been pushed a bit is the nuclear launch thing, which we’ve seen in trailers and other information put out by Bethesda. It kind of sounds like the goal is to get those nukes, launch those nukes, and... try to kill everyone? I don’t know. It’s very vague. In previous Fallout games, you started the game with a basic goal. How you got there was up to you but the goal itself was fairly clear once you left the vault. 

8. Events

Like other MMO games (-cough-Destiny-cough-) they are trying to do live events. Now... there’s a petite problem with this idea from the get-go... they’ve already said that there will only be a limited number of people on the same server at any given time. That limited number is 24. Now... the map, the world? It’s pretty damned big. And these live events are designed to have multiple people participating. Hubs tried doing a few, but even with three people in one, it was impossible. There were specific locations that people needed to defend, and all were getting hit at once. The players were quickly overwhelmed and over-run. Hopefully this is something they’ll work on. Unlikely, but they might. On a side note, I saw the final boss for one even was that moth-creature thing... level 50... so have fun all low levels out there! 

9. Destiny

Okay, this may seem like a duh but the game really does feel like a cheap knock-off of Destiny, as far as the MMO goes. They have “emotes” in there, your “team” is usually slotted for three people... the live events... there are just some similarities here. Now, that’s not a bad thing... except... it’s Fallout... not Destiny, not Fortnight, not WoW. This is just my personal pet peeve, but there it is. If you’re going to do things that another, successful, game is doing? At least do them better... or at the very least, on the same level. 

10. Skyrim

It’s very Skyrim-esq. Remember playing Skyrim? You could play for a few hours and be utterly alone, run into no one, nothing but a few animals and maybe a dragon or two out in the wild. Unless you went to a town, you were pretty much only going to run into enemies out there. It was a massive map, a huge world, and you were just... kinda out there... like at night... alone... kind of wasn’t that fun when it was like that. 

11. Weapons/Armor

Okay, so, obviously we haven’t seen the big ticket items. But... I will say this, your weapons break, you have to fix them... your armor? You don’t find it, you make it. In fact, looting seems to just be skimpy all around. A few things that the hubs found weren’t really armor, just clothes. The armor itself? Up to you... and the materials you’ve managed to gather. 

12. The Food/Water thing

So, they’ve leaned on almost a survival type setting here. Your character gets hungry/thirst... everything except prepackaged food/drink will give you some rads, some more than others. If you don’t drink/eat then you’re character will suffer. Also, a lot of items have a disease percentage attached to them. Hubs ate something that had a 7% chance of giving his character a disease and sure enough, bam. Now, this might be a BETA thing though. There are disease cures out there though, he found one. 

13. V.A.T.S.

Ah, vats. The saving grace of so many Fallout players. Now, this is probably a BETA thing but VATS are slow to activate... and because it’s MMO, it doesn’t slow time, just helps you aim. Or, it should. You need perk cards, see... to make it so your dude will actually hit that target. No perk card? Barely any damage done because they’re just firing willy-nilly, no more separate limb/body location selection. 

14. Congrats on Level 5, now die!

At level 5, it becomes open season on your character. At level 5, you can now take damage from other players... and they can kill you... and take your junk. All those precious materials you’ve been collecting, they can get them. When you die, there’s a little bag that appears on the ground with all the junk you’ve been carrying, nothing else as far as I can see... but anyone can just come along and pick that up. It’s their’s now. Now, there is this whole murder thing they are going to do, supposedly, where if you kill another player there’ll be a bounty put out on you and you, in theory, will be hunted down and murdered back? I’m not sure how that’s going to work. But... at level 5, you take damage, from all sources, including team-mates - though the damage is supposed to be reduced from them. That’s... going to result in a lot of accidental kills. 

Final Thoughts:

I’m nervous. I’m worried, for all the fans of the franchise. They’ve already come out and said “this isn’t a Fallout game” (could have fooled me with that name, though). It feels like they completely ignored the things that made Fallout 4 such a success... and instead, embraced the things that people didn’t like about Skyrim. I’m worried that what happened to Mass Effect, will happen to Fallout. People have been waiting for this game, super excited about it, couldn’t wait for it! And... the game they’re going to get is more... Fallout-esq. Not the next Fallout game. Like they wanted to cash in on the MMO thing but didn’t want to actually come up with anything new. Which leads to the next thought and worry... micro-transactions. Playing the game and seeing the lack of content... the skimpy supplies and loot... you can very easily see them adding micro-transactions and DLC’s that should have been a part of the main game. Which is just not a good idea right now, not ever really... when you pay $60 for this, which feels like it is, quite literally, a “base” game. 

But, it’s not all bad... 

There were a few things that I did like about it. The photo/selfy mode is cute, though wholly unoriginal... and they have instruments around the world that you and your friends can play together (like a band). You see your character performing some actions that you didn’t before (laying down)... though, there isn’t any “sleep” to speak of, your character just rests, but that’s because your character never leaves the public space of their MMO world. Even in their own home.