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The newest Fallout 76 controversy, for those who don’t know yet, is that people are now raving because the Power Armor editions of the game didn’t have and item it claimed to have it. The Power Armor Edition of Fallout 76 is a special edition that included the deluxe version of the game, named the Tricentennial Edition, along with a glow-in-the-dark map of Appalachia, a bag of plastic figures cast in the forms of famous Fallout creatures and people, and - most importantly - a wearable T-51 Power Armor helmet with voice modulator and headlamp. This Power Armor helmet came with a West Tek canvas bag to carry it in, or use for your gym socks, whichever you prefer.

The current controversy is that Bethesda did not disclose a specific aspect about this special edition: the canvas bag was replaced with a nylon bag prior to launch. No customers were informed of this change and no disclaimers were given about the contents of the special edition being subject to change.

Understandably, people are upset. They were promised something great and given something crappy. As a buyer of the Defiance Collector’s Edition, purchased solely for the nice messenger bag, I understand why someone would buy a collector boxset or special edition for an item OTHER than the main affair. (The Defiance CE touted a Hellbug statue about 4″ tall, but that wasn’t the main attraction for me.)

However, if people were ACTUALLY upset over this issue wouldn’t we have heard about this the day these special editions started to work their way into eager hands? The outrage has only come in the wake of Fallout 76′s bad reviews and bad PR. It took players 18 days to come to terms with their outrage? Either that, or they’re capitalizing on an opportunity to claim some money back at the cost of Bethesda’s well-being.

Now, Bethesda fucked up - 100%. I’m not arguing that, because it would be foolish to try. The game is riddled with bugs, the customer support teams are being unprofessional and short with some people. If I’m being honest, Bethesda should have known this was coming when players expressed concerned in the BETA, but they did nothing. They released the game anyway and from the looks of things, based on their responses on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and other outlets, they are planning on fixing it in the future a la No Man’s Sky. In response, consumers are trying to SUE Bethesda.

Now, if the game is so bad then Bethesda SHOULD issue refunds. I agree with that. But, throwing them under the bus and trying to cripple the company you claim to love is stupid. It’s a level of entitlement this generation is infamous for. The game is broken and you deserve your money back, but trying to cripple the company and all those who work for it is ridiculous. I doubt the devs working on this had much of a say in how the timeline of release proceeded. I guarantee it wasn’t their call to release right now, but some higher up “suit” who just wanted the payday. It’s always a bad call, because more time makes a better game and a better game yields a higher payday with a longer sustain. But you can’t convince old-money CEOs that quality is better than quantity when they’re used to rolling devs over and shaking the loose change from their pockets before they dump them aside to move onto the next (looking at you, Telltale execs).

Personally, I “finished” the game. I’ve beat the “big bads” and cleared the main challenges. Mopping up completion points and min-maxing my character are all I have left until new content is added. I enjoyed myself, but only just-so. This isn’t the level of gameplay quality I expected. (Technically it’s on par with the Bethesda brand and all that comes with that relative to the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games.) I give it a 6/10 if I HAD to score it without much more context. And yet, I STILL contacted Bethesda and asked for compensation. I bought the game day 1. I was there when the gates opened and in spite of all the BS I stuck around. I watched the price drop by $25 7-days after release. I didn’t want my money back, but I wanted a little something extra so I asked for $20 in Atoms (which is the average sale value for Black Friday deals). They obliged. I’m Gucci.

People are claiming I’m a fool for taking what amounts to a pittance when a settlement could be on the horizon if the lawsuits go through. I don’t want them to give me money from a suit. I don’t want the company to die off from this. I want them to LEARN from this mistake and to do better in the future. I’m not an apologist. They fucked up and there’s no mistaking that. But without Bethesda Fallout and Elder Scrolls die. I’m not saying we should excuse shady practice or crappy delivery to preserve these franchises, but we should give them an opportunity to redeem themselves.

Hell of an intro line there… You know what makes ME sad? When Games Journalists aren’t even invested enough in the games they review to know the mechanics. Forbes has been irking me for quite a while. Honestly, they seem like the position was open because they wanted to capitalize on the possible ad revenue but didn’t really want to bother hiring actual GAMERS because that nerd culture doesn’t really mesh with their “business-y” vibe. A common trend among these articles is a journalist who hasn’t done enough research about the product and complains about something they personally don’t understand. In this article the write claims that they don’t actually know what gear drops when you die. He speculates it might just be “junk” category items (the ones we use for crafting and repairing of items). If he had done even an hour of research prior to starting the B.E.T.A. or even writing the article he would know that only your “junk” drops and not ever your actual gear (maybe some caps if you were engaged in PvP play). He goes on to criticize the lack of saves in a Fallout game and while I can’t blame him for the initial complaint the reality is that any Persistent Online game does not have a manual save system least of all one that is built around the potential of random and sudden PvP fights. Fallout games have always required a save system to counter the YASD that the game is known for (Yet-Another-Stupid-Death). Perhaps you threw a grenade at an enemy and the physics of the explosion caused a barrel to hurdle backwards at you and explode in your face faster than you could even see it. Maybe you fell through the world and died. These are things that Fallout games are known for and the main reason that the save system has been used to heavily over the years.

That said, these are not issues we should expect with this game. You have to give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt that things like this will be worked on well enough before the actual release that they won’t affect players of 76.

Paul goes on to give ACTUAL opinions on gameplay and functionality of Fallout 76 that he dislikes. That is the point of these articles, but he takes so long to get there. Some of what he says is legitimately disturbing or saddening, but his lack of knowledge about the games as a whole makes me value his opinion less. Conversely, someone like Oxhorn making these statements would have me more worried because they are so invested in the Fallout world and its lore that if they thought there was an issue it probably IS an issue.

“Concert” by hakutooon: http://bit.ly/2LmZCXW   

Calling it now! There will be a huge change in Wild Pokemon Battles before this game is launched. Notice that in both this trailer and the Japanese trailer there was nothing showing wild Pokemon capturing or battling. Combine that with the questions regarding how players felt about the game on the survey that went out a while ago and I’m pretty sure that The Pokemon Company is taking steps to alter the game based on fan feedback from E3. Mark my words, there will be some change to Wild Pokemon Battling / Capturing before launch. These trailers make me even more confident than I was before.

Alfred G. Buckham. Aerial view of Edinburgh. c. 1920

Damn. This one came out of NOWHERE.

Realm Royale is the newest in the latest trend of taking IPs and assets and converting them over for use in the Battle Royale market.

I think games like Fortnite and PUBG are changing the gaming landscape. I hardly know anyone who plays standard team deathmatch style games anymore. A few people play CS:GO and others play Overwatch, which I don’t really consider to be part of the standard Shooter genre anyways. 

Realm Royale is the latest offering from Hi-Rez studios. Yes. That Hi-Rez. Paladins Hi-Rez. It’s a class shooter Battle Royale with crafting and an interesting loot system.

The Realm is the world of Paladins and you can tell by the art style, animations, and color palette. Everything in the game is Paladins inspired including the voice over callouts you can use to communicate with your teammates.

The standard formula is broken here and I gotta say it: This is my new favorite BR. There is so much innovation here to what is already an established genre and yet EVERYTHING WORKS.

The biggest changes are the Down-But-Not-Out system and the crafting.

Standard BR have you either instantly die or go into a downed state and wait revival from a teammate. Realm Royale says no. Instead, hen you die you turn into a clucking cartoon chicken with a white flag and you can run around and jump and hide. After 30 seconds you are automatically revived with half health. This does away with the idea that your teammates have to stop defending themselves to pick you up, which was always a point of contention I had with the system. It meant that every knock-down was that much more critical because you couldn’t resuscitate them without breaking your attention from pushers. It was a flawed system, but until now there hasn’t really been much better. And let’s be honest the only reason the chicken works is because of the Paladins world. That wouldn’t work in Fortnite or God-forbid, PUBG.

The second innovation is crafting. Everything that drops can be instantly disenchanted with one key to turn into a general crafting currency called Shards. You take your shards to one of the numerous forges on the map and use it to craft Random Legendary tier gear or class skills. If you have managed to kill an enemy player in Chicken form you’ll also get a Chicken Leg which is a material used to craft your class specific Legendary Weapon. It means that your highest power spike can’t occur unless you can kill other players. Some people seem to do fine without their weapons, but it’s always a strong option and in some cases is the best thing you can use as that class bar-none. All the gear comes in White -> Green -> Purple -> Orange tiers with Orange, or Legendary, being the highest. If you come across upgrades spamming the assigned “pick-up” button (E by default) will swap it out. It makes the whole “which loot is better comparison” trivial. Better color = better tier and everything else? Shard it.

Now the real kicker. Every time you craft at a Forge the smoke stack lights up and the building becomes one big beacon that says “Someone is here and they’re crafting something really powerful! Come kill them and take it!” It’s an excellent addition to the BR formula. Players aren’t encouraged to hide and unlike Fortnite you can’t build cover and camp in it. The zone moves fairly quickly and with Forges at nearly every single Point-of-Interest there are always showdowns over loot.

Now, for healing yourself there is the standard health and armor potions (Realm Royale’s equivalent to Shields from Fortnite). The difference is that you can only use potions to repair what you’ve lost which means you’ll need to find armor to wear first. That armor also comes in tiers and each slot bestows buffs like movement speed, reload speed, cooldowns, etc. 

To help cover ground int he map every player also has access to a mount by default by pressing Z. It takes 1s to mount and drastically improves your movement speed, but if you’re hit once or fall from to far a height you’ll be dismounted with a 2s cooldown. It seems like this would break the BR tradition about vehicles, but really all it means is that you can spend more time looting and shooting and less time running on foot to get away from the storm.

I won’t really go into detail about the classes because this isn’t meant to be a full review, but it IS a class shooter in the vein of TF2 and Overwatch and coming from Paladins the assets and expertise are there. All 5 classes feel very different and encourage different play styles. There are enough skills for each class that you can play each game as the same class and find different ways to utilize their strengths. Given that you can only equip two skills at a time and each class gets a unique movement skill you quickly realize there are so many ways to play each class. I definitely encourage you to try them all out.

Black & White Challenge - Day 4/7   

I was tagged by my friend ©yama-bato

Rules are to post one black & white photo for 7 days. Additionally, no titles, no explanations, no humans allowed and you should tag one person per day.

Populierenaan in the storm  -    Markus Matthias Krüger  , 2010.

German,b.1981-