In addition to having a wealth of playable content, a good online game ensures that consumers can continue to experience freshness during the playing process, and give rewards in a timely manner to meet the player's sense of achievement. To achieve this, it is necessary to rely on a compelling background worldview, as well as a human-centered storyline. If you take the single-player game of the "Fallout" series as an example, the choices made by the survivors for the rest of their lives, when the major forces are surging to compete for the few resources left in the Wasteland, the vault residents played by the players have always been important characters throughout the storyline.
However, it's hard to feel the fun that role-playing games should have in Fallout 76, because online games don't deserve to have a good plot? The answer is no. FF 14 presents what "the player is the real protagonist", and NPCs living in the game world can also show humanity and be loved. To blame the failure of Fallout 76 on the grounds for online gaming is the reason for the original sin, I think that is a very unobjective conclusion, because there are other works that have succeeded.
Prior to the Wastelander update, Fallout 76 had no NPCs other than robots, and players were confronted with long-dead corpses and tapes with wonderful stories that lasted for nearly a year. So after the Wastelander update, the few NPCs scattered all over the world, can we finally enjoy the works that truly inherit the spirit of "Fallout"? No, because those NPCs are of very little use, first of all they cannot be attacked, which is understandable, and if they are killed, it may cause other players to not be able to carry out the mission smoothly.
Secondly, the dialogue options are all meaningless nonsense, and the skill appraisal of the dialogue is designed to be very moderate, as long as the basic attributes meet the standard, you can complete the identification and get more additional materials. Since the dialogue option has no effect on the task process, from receiving the task to completing it, just keep choosing the first option, although some tasks will let you make a choice at the end, but the consequences of the impact are not the same, you will not feel that you are important, only think that you are a dispensable nameless.
Let's go back to the source, why there are a large number of players who like "Fallout", I believe the answer is already in your hearts. In terms of gameplay, different choices have different consequences, and in the face of malicious predator groups, players can choose to fight, escape, or use the mouth cannon magic to persuade the other party to let you go. But in Fallout 76, the only option left to fight against the hostile forces is to fight. It's like an ancient online game, when you receive a mission to a certain location, there are local cults to establish a stronghold, you can only rush in and kill all the enemies.
Why do cult members stay here? Their beliefs are interesting Why can't I join? Obviously there is an opportunity to resolve the incident peacefully, but the production team only sets the cult members as "ruthless killing machines with human appearances", without understanding, communication, and compromise, and the result is an empty killing journey. Will this be Fallout, a favorite of RPG fans? The answer is self-evident.
The plot tension is the weakest in history, and reading supplementary information can understand the whole picture of the event
Next, let me explain to you why the drama performance of "Fallout 76" is called the black history of the series. The main reason is that although this work has created a complete background worldview, the timeline is the earliest work in the "Fallout" series, and this time the space-time background is set in West Virginia more than two decades after the nuclear disaster. The reason the player steps out of the shelter is not because his wife is killed or his children have been kidnapped, nor is it because the shelter is in a water shortage crisis and someone needs to go out in search of a water filter.
Ignorant players are inexplicably sent to the Wasteland by the Overseers on a mission, as for what is the goal of the mission? The Overseer doesn't want to tell you that you're going to collect tapes he's hiding all over the game's map, and after a series of adventures, he'll tell you that a highly contagious disease called spokes is spreading, and you need to make a vaccine for everyone to fight. Seeing this, some people may ask the plot like this? Excluding some conspiracy theories and social experiments in shelters, it is indeed like this, surprised, not surprised? Although a closer look at some of the written materials can find the creation and demise of some camp forces, it is still hoped that those processes can be made out, rather than relying on reading the brain to make up the process.
Precisely because the main line flow has passed without any explosive points, too few NPCs are not enough to support the player's feelings for them, the few camps that still exist in the Wasteland continent have little intersection with each other, let alone conflict, and a group of people have not even looked at each other. For all of the above reasons, the main line of "Fallout 76" is considered to be more empty and boring than the previous game "Fallout 4", and at least four generations of camps have a college dedicated to making synths, and judging whether synths can be accepted by the world from the conflict of values between the Iron Brotherhood and the Railroad Organization, and whether it is moral to plan to replace humans with synths.
In Fallout 76 you'll only run into a large group of spokes who want to tear you apart, and each faction is hostile to this monster, but is reluctant to vaccinate for some very mentally retarded reasons, and the player is willing to cooperate if they help them. Knowing the infectivity of spokes, and knowing that the chance of survival of being infected with this disease is zero, and will lose humanity to attack living creatures everywhere, and others will provide you with vaccines and refuse to be beaten, shouldn't such people be infected?
The survival factors are too chicken ribs, and the design of the weight-bearing system is not very reasonable
The survival element is from the content of Fallout: New Vegas, when the player turns on the survival mode, your mission requires eating, drinking, and sleeping, and not ingesting nutrients for too long will cause the character to die. In order to make the game able to put on the "survival of the end of the world" label, "Fallout 76" naturally put the survival mode directly into the game, but such a move caused a problem, that is, "weight management" is very difficult.
As we all know, the Wasteland has been hit by a nuclear bomb, and canned food produced before the outbreak of war is a great choice for solving hunger. This is also true, players can find canned food almost everywhere during their exploration, and the amount of supplies is large enough to keep you staying in the camp to eat until you die. So the question is, in a world where supplies are inexhaustible and will be refreshed indefinitely, what is the point of activating survival mode? Isn't the original purpose to set up to increase the weight of the backpack, so that we are overwhelmed by the full push of canned food?
Weight bearing is the most wordless design of Fallout 76, which refers not to the weight-bearing system itself, but to the extremely irrational weight of items. This game adds weight to the food, medicine, and ammunition resources, and the above three important resources have no weight in the previous game, so they can be carried in large quantities. During the game, players often have to cut off supplies according to the current weight. Players who have played the previous habit of carrying all the supplies on their bodies and walking around must change this habit, although there are many Perks that can increase the weight and reduce the weight of specific materials, but later in the game, only the weight of ammunition is the most practical.
The reason is very simple, that is, the death trigger of this game is very slight, and the death of the character will not have a permanent negative effect, only all the garbage raw materials picked up will be lost, as long as it is picked up again after resurrection. There is no reason to carry a lot of medicine to save your life, let alone the food and drinks available everywhere on the map, and you can risk it with enough ammunition, so I will conclude that the survival element is a joke, and don't expect to play the atmosphere of survival in "Fallout 76".
Since weight bearing is mentioned, I would like to explore this design further. Based on the basic mission value, the character has 200 weights, deducting the armor and weapons worn, leaving about 120 weights. Then the medicine and ammunition and other materials are calculated separately, the actual weight that can be used to loot the garbage raw materials may be less than 50 left, and there are two things that the player can do, one is to throw away the relatively less important materials, and the other is to establish a CAMP camp to store the supplies.
The point is that the total amount of weight that a camp bin can hold is 800, in other words, excluding any additional bonuses, the total weight that a character can carry is capped at 1000. Sounds reasonable, right? In order to balance the maximum amount of supplies that all players can carry, limiting the weight load is a good idea. However, things are not as simple as you think, because as long as you pay for a subscription to the Fallout 1st feature, you can use the "No Weight Limit" scrap bin, allowing you to stock up on supplies for the entire game world!
The main quest is boring along the way, and there are obvious signs of cutting corners
Quest design is the most important part of online games, and from the moment you enter the game, players are exposed to beginner tutorial quests. When you complete the basic missions, future missions will add plot, new systems, and even exciting boss battles, and well-designed missions can support the entire work, allowing players to stay fresh until the end of the game. Normally, this is how it develops.
It is a pity to inform the "Fallout 76" mission design still have expectations of the unpopular players, the mission design of this game is like the "Fallout 4" volunteer army to restore the territory mission, you go to a place to kill the enemy after getting the mission props, and finally return the mission items to the designated NPC, it is equivalent to playing almost all the mission content.
It's no exaggeration to say that the mission design team's thinking is basically stuck in twenty years ago, why can all the missions be made into boring monster hunting gameplay! Even the faction missions are the same, we can choose to join the designated faction, every day they will provide the player with daily mission objectives, but these objectives are still the same, simple and rough monster killing and props tasks fill the entire work, completely unable to let the human body feel the sense of accomplishment of completing the task.
Because main quests and faction quests are so boring, a good helper to accompany most players to level up is a public event that automatically triggers over time throughout the map. Public events are much more fun to play, and there's a good chance that players from the same game world will participate in the event together to accomplish the goals required by the event. This is the importance of socialization, and the vast majority of enthusiastic veteran players will not hesitate to help novice players.
Lone wolf players like this writer often meet veteran players on the way to participate in public events, and they will warmly welcome you to join the team. After completing the task, you will also point to the package underground, and when you open it, you will find that there are a large number of supplies inside. Maybe it's a failing online game, but the veteran players who are active in the game world are the friendliest group I've ever met for newcomer players, and because of their presence, Fallout 76 can continue to develop.
Being toyed with between the palms of the hands is pathetic to the point of making people laugh at AI intelligence
Low IQ AI is the biggest factor affecting the combat experience, how mentally retarded is the Enemy AI of Fallout 76? When chased by a monster, if the other party can only attack at close range, you just have to jump to a high place, he can only stare at you dryly, and he can't do anything. Almost all non-range enemies can be played to death by the difference in terrain, and occasionally there will be enemies pointing a gun at you without firing a bullet, which is no longer known whether it is a game error or the AI is too stupid.
To share an interesting incident that I have encountered, that is, my character level is about twenty or so, because I found that the public events in high-level areas have been refreshed, so I directly and quickly moved over to carry out the task. After the mission was completed, while sorting out my backpack belongings, I saw three level sixty-odd mutants with spinning machine guns rushing towards me.
I thought I might be beaten into a honeycomb by the machine gun, but I didn't expect that the three super mutants were just standing in place waiting for me, driving the machine gun fiercely without moving. In this way, I continued to shoot with the fifteenth rank shotgun in my hand at their small heads, and after three minutes of struggle, it took more than fifty bullets to successfully brush three enemies with a single level forty higher than me, but I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment, I just wanted to laugh.
There are many interesting stories about the strange enemy AI, here is another example to share with you, when you travel to a deserted amusement park, the optional target of a side quest will ask you to look for the egg of the Deathclaw, come to the island to look for the old half a day can not find where the Deathclaw is, suddenly found that there is a Deathclaw egg in a suitcase that no one cares about.
After successfully getting the egg to go on a mission, one of the dialogue options was to complain that the Deathclaws that haunted the island might kill themselves, and I wondered if I had encountered Deathclaws at all after the mission, and after a while I felt that there was nothing to do, and returned to the island. After walking around for two or three times or not finding the Death Claw, suddenly found that there was a reptile roar underground, only to find that the character would be death claws actually stuck in the ground and could not move, as for the principle of what the author is not clear, do not want to waste time to investigate, just push this pot to the stupid AI or a million unsolvable B Society-specific game errors on the line.
Camp camp system, creative gameplay created by all players
Camp CAMP is the midpoint of Fallout 76, just step out of the shelter will receive a series of training tasks, from finding locations to collecting raw materials to build facilities, it is clear that camp construction is a system that attaches great importance to it. It is important to note that a player can only build one camp, and if you want to move the camp, the bottle cap will be deducted, and if the world's camp construction site is already occupied by other players, you can only choose to migrate or find a new world.
Camp is like a small landmark open to the public, players can design one beautiful building after another according to the terrain and natural landscape, although the shortcomings of this game are too many to count, but camp CAMP is one of the few I think is a good design.
Of course, a large part of the reason for thinking this comes from the creativity of other players, each veteran player will use existing materials to build a new place on the seemingly lifeless wasteland. For example, some players will set up relay points along the road, vending machines selling supplies, and there are workbenches in the camp where players can mend guns and craft bullets; some players will build a large number of turrets to keep the area safe, and the turrets can also be used to help kill enemies.
For some players who do not have building talents, the atom shop in the game provides some small buildings that have been built, and players can earn atomic coins by unlocking weekly daily objectives or career missions, so that they can buy practical and good-looking CAMP camp facilities. For players who want to play Fallout 76 for a long time, it is recommended to use all the atomic coins to purchase CAMP camp facilities, many of which can make your play process easier.
Such as robot helpers that automatically collect supplies over time, converters that convert unnecessary ammo to buy new ammunition, refrigerators that can store food to keep them fresh, and iron nets that can protect against enemies' intrusion are all recommended exchange facilities. As for whether it is worth spending money to buy atomic coins, the author believes that it is not necessary, because only the scrap bins available by subscribing to Fallout 1st have irreplaceable functions, and the rest of the facilities are dispensable.
I have mastered the technology but can't find a way to make it, which is a headache for the design drawing system
Regarding the design drawing system, the author believes that it is a very failed design. The main reason is that useful design drawings are not easy to obtain, and if you want to obtain practical design drawings, you can only look for them everywhere or buy them with NPC merchants. It should be that all players who play alone and do not have relatives and friends have encountered the same problem, that is, even if the skill of making weapons or armor is full, they will only be able to make the initial weapons and equipment because they have not found the corresponding design drawings.
Although weapons and equipment will increase the craftable level based on the player's level, you wouldn't want to wear featureless leather armor from level 1 to level 50, would you? Do you also want to wear more defensive combat armor? The author also thinks so, but unfortunately, the design drawings that can make advanced weapons and armor are quite rare, and even some of the design drawings need to be repeated to complete public events, so that there is a chance to brush out. So how do you get the design drawings stably? There's only one answer, and that's to trade with other players, but Fallout 76 doesn't do a great job of player socializing.
Fallout 76 doesn't support text chat, and if you want to communicate with other players, you can only rely on emojis or voice chat. Let's first exclude the voice chat part, because the author has only met European and American players who use microphones to speak, and have not yet seen the exclusive Chinese community. It's hard for you to use emojis to explain your intentions to other players and want to trade? No problem, so what do you want to trade? I want to make a design for a combat shotgun!
If you can find an emoji that represents this meaning, then congratulations, the deal can be completed smoothly. In most cases, it is almost impossible to accurately express the information content you want to convey, and then a CAMP camp facility [vending machine] appears, and the player can put their unwanted items in the vending machine for other players to buy. Almost all of my design drawings are bought in this way, and occasionally I can find cheap and practical design drawings in vending machines, but most of them can only buy some design drawings of house decorations that few people want, and to this day, I still have not bought the design of the battle shotgun.
The inability to craft advanced weapons stably creates another problem, which is that weapon accessories need to be made under the same weapon to unlock. Simply put, the rarer the gun, the more dependent the player will be on self-produced, and then disassembled to unlock the manufacturing permission of the accessory. For example, weapons that can be found everywhere in the early part of the game, such as homemade pistols, shotguns, pump-action shotguns, finger tigers and other weapon accessories, can be quickly assembled. However, advanced weapons such as heavy machine guns, laser rifles, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, and other accessories, unless they learn to design drawings and can be manufactured in large quantities from the garbage stored in warehouses, may be able to explore the game map for several hours, and may not be able to find one of the weapons mentioned above.
The same principle can be applied to the armor, armor accessories are more difficult to obtain, especially the power armor, power armor accessories can not be unlocked by disassembly, you need to look for design drawings to learn the production method. Because I could not find the design drawings for a long time, after the author reached the full level of 50, he still could not equip the power armor to risk everywhere, the reason is very simple, that is, I can neither find the finished product of the power armor armor, nor can I make them myself.
The homogenization generated by the pursuit of META is the original sin that online games cannot avoid
The term META exists in any game (hereinafter collectively referred to as the mainstream routine), and Fallout 76 is no exception. The fast-paced social environment that pursues speed and efficiency affects the way human beings live in daily life, as well as the game habits of players, which is an inevitable result. Pursuing a mainstream routine is not an act of shame, it is one of the main ways to allow players to directly experience the fun of the game, and the author does not reject this phenomenon.
However, if you use the mainstream environment of "Fallout 76" to analyze this matter, you will find a big problem, that is, "there seems to be no other mainstream except for wearing power armor and holding a big gun to suppress the king". Yes, the problem is that the character cultivation route in this game is too monotonous, and if you want to hit high damage in the later stages of the team time, you can only go through the heavy pressure blood flow (supplement: heavy weapons are powerful and have a high rate of fire, you can quickly solve powerful enemies, and some equipment and talents will give a very terrible buff effect when the player's health is reduced to a certain level).
When you see that everyone has become the same module one after another, and then look at the characters you have cultivated according to your preferences, can you resist the urge not to copy the mainstream routine? Character homogenization, so that a large number of homogeneous characters appear in the game, everywhere are the same special skills of the players, see the same level of players with lightning speed to kill the enemy, and then look at their inefficient combat process, the will is not strong enough will deviate from the original intention, follow the homogenization and support the continuous expansion of the homogenization phenomenon.
Some people may wonder what kind of results this will bring to the game environment? If it is a PVP-based game, the homogenization phenomenon will affect the life of the game, fortunately, "Fallout 76" has made the PVP gameplay into a new mode [Nuclear Winter], although it will not directly affect the living space of novice players, but the single mainstream popularity will make the diversity of character cultivation disappear, directly affect the process and fun of cultivation, and then lose part of the playability. This is not a good phenomenon for an online game that wants to develop steadily in the long term.
B Society, I advise you to be kind
In addition to the countless game bugs that have not been corrected since the Fallout 3 era, Fallout 76 has another fatal problem that seriously affects the game experience, that is, the quality of the server connection is extremely poor. Severe network latency occurs every time you enter a new game world, and shooting enemies with firearms takes up to a second to trigger damage determination. There is also the fact that entering the workbench interface will sometimes be directly stuck, the characters can not perform any action, after more than ten seconds will open the props production interface.
Serious connection delay problem is the fatal injury of this game, usually there are enough game errors to annoy you, and now there is another factor majeure, so that you will always be attacked by the time system stand-in messenger, take three steps back five steps, the character is stuck as if it is stopped by time, the above scene is not uncommon. If you want to start with Fallout 76, please repeatedly evaluate your emotional management skills, and don't play games until your stomach is on fire, which is not a healthy practice.
Ironically, the interesting advantages of Fallout 76 come from the spontaneous behavior of players, and the game exudes a domineering atmosphere of "no good enough to give up without squeezing this IP value today". Fortunately, there are die-hard fans of the series who show the good side of online games, that is, the social dating component, to newcomer players, which allows the game to get a good rating (mostly positive) in the Steam comment area. Although the game itself is stretched, these enthusiastic players can really make people feel a touch of humanity in the wasteland world.
If this game is a pure single-player game, such a poor game quality is displayed in front of fans, although most players will swallow this plate of steamed water with tears, but it is difficult to guarantee that in the future, they will willingly spend money to buy and support the promotion of new works in the "Fallout" series, at least after two years of updates, I still can't see the advantages of this game that are worth playing, and I don't think it has reached the passing edge score, B Society, I advise you to be kind.