Fallout 4

Vorph · Oct 14, 2015

It was like Zenimax sat down and tried to come up with a MMO that would appeal to people who like TES games as little as humanly possible. When I played the beta I really had to wonder if anyone designing the game had ever played a Bethesda game before. Other than reusing some Skyrim assets and a bit of the lore it had nothing in common with the single player games.

So yeah, add me to the list of people glad that Fallout will very likely never be made into some MMO abomination.

Tuco · Oct 14, 2015

Vaclav_sl said:
While yes, Zenimax was mostly just art before so it was their first time doing proper programming - you're literally talking about a 90 min commute between them and BethSoft - there's no real excuse that they couldn't have called upon help if they needed it.

I'm not sure what argument you're making here. The level of consultation that Todd Howard had with ESO is unknown, as is his true opinion. My guess? He took a look at how ZOS was fucking over his franchise and distanced himself as much as possible.

Vorph · Oct 14, 2015

Yeah, whether or not they could have consulted with Bethesda is irrelevant, since they clearly didn't. At least not beyond the most basic planning stages of the project.

One could say the same thing about Bethesda consulting with id as well. Apparently they finally did do this for FO4 to [hopefully] improve the FPS combat, but there's still no excuse for them to be using the same piece of shit engine for all this time when they could have asked id to build features into idTech 4 and 5 specifically to support Bethesda's needs for TES and Fallout. It's not like id has anything better to do, they release like one fucking game a decade.

Vaclav · Oct 14, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
I'm not sure what argument you're making here. The level of consultation that Todd Howard had with ESO is unknown, as is his true opinion. My guess? He took a look at how ZOS was fucking over his franchise and distanced himself as much as possible.

You seemed to have been giving them carte blanche about the screwup, when they should've gotten involved if they cared.

In short, it doesn't bode well for any future MMO products - you seemed to be saying "if they took more interest..." which there was no challenge in them doing this time, so....

Erronius · Oct 14, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
I don't even know what storybricks is besides some vapor ware.

Are you saying this as in you just aren't familiar with what they were trying to accomplish, or are you dubious they had anything because we never really saw anything concrete?

Urlithani_sl said:
The saddest thing is that a Fallout MMO would seriously be the hardest MMO to screw up, and they would find a way.

Fallen Earth was my hope for something like this, and they screwed the pooch so badly early on that I'm not even sure that I want that type of an MMO anymore.

Big_w_powah · Oct 14, 2015

a GOOD fallout MMO I could get behind.

hodj · Oct 14, 2015

Quaid you son of a bitch.

I just updated ESO and played it for 10 minutes and its still shit.

What am I missing that you're not bro?

How do you derive fun from this game?

khalid · Oct 14, 2015

Some days ago, because of this thread, I ordered the Fallout Anthology just to have the bomb for my office.

It was stolen from my doorstep.

Quaid · Oct 14, 2015

hodj_sl said:
Quaid you son of a bitch.

I just updated ESO and played it for 10 minutes and its still shit.

What am I missing that you're not bro?

How do you derive fun from this game?

What class/spec are you? What faction? (Go Ebonheart, the others are boring)

What level? The first 50 are garbage. Literally some of the worst quests/world I've ever seen. You have to shlep through the muck in this one for the prize. Get a decent guild at veteran ranks and go play around in Imperial City/Sewers. If you enjoy MMOs at all you'll love it.

hodj · Oct 14, 2015

Quaid_sl said:
What class/spec are you? What faction? (Go Ebonheart, the others are boring)

What level? The first 50 are garbage. Literally some of the worst quests/world I've ever seen. You have to shlep through the muck in this one for the prize. Get a decent guild at veteran ranks and go play around in Imperial City/Sewers. If you enjoy MMOs at all you'll love it.

Well that explains that.

khalid_sl said:
Some days ago, because of this thread, I ordered the Fallout Anthology just to have the bomb for my office.

It was stolen from my doorstep.

WTF get a refund on that shit and order it again.

Faith · Oct 15, 2015

Big W Powah!_sl said:
a GOOD fallout MMO I could get behind.

Yeah but thats the problem, just *what* is a good Fallout MMO? Gunplay? Humor? Exploration? VAT or FPS? City or desert?

Fallout would not feel like Fallout, to me, if it was overran by people in raid-level powerarmor wasting the gangs and enclave all over the place. It would have to be such a huge area to explore, and a very limited number of players allowed on each server, that the whole point of being an MMO would be negated. You would need to make surviving the wasteland just as hard as shooting down super mutants, and that would not happen if you meet another person every 10 meters.

A Co-op Fallout however... that would possibly work.

Agraza · Oct 15, 2015

I'd totally be cool with one friend joining my fallout game. And even then I'd only be cool with a select group of my friends having the privilege.

That said, they could design a multiplayer experience for FO4 by using the settlement tower defense stuff. WC3 custom maps for tower defense and lane wars were quite popular. So long as they keep it distinct from the SP experience it could even be of benefit all around in finding geometry issues and getting a big mod community devoted to building high quality settlements for use in custom FO4 games. I could have fun wrecking raiders and mutants then using their loot to upgrade my base round after round.

Tuco · Oct 15, 2015

Vaclav_sl said:
You seemed to have been giving them carte blanche about the screwup, when they should've gotten involved if they cared.

In short, it doesn't bode well for any future MMO products - you seemed to be saying "if they took more interest..." which there was no challenge in them doing this time, so....

I don't think BGS has any power to intervene in ZOS's product. Only Zenimax does.

Imagine if you built a beautiful backyard landscape with amazing brick inlays, a built-in bbq and firepit and a jacuzzi. Then a year later you build one for your dad. Then a year later for your cousin. You get a rep in your family for making the most amazing backyard scenes ever.

Then your brother-in-law says, "Hey I want to try one.". You say, "Great! Let's talk about a design!". Then you go over to his house and he lays out the most retarded nonsense ever. It has all the right pieces, he's spending tens of thousands of dollars on it and he's even hiring professional contractors to do the work. But he's making foolish decisions about how it should be done and doesn't really understand what the purpose of anything is for. He's putting the bbq and pit too close to the jacuuzi. He's making it so that people's vision is blocked so they can't see each other's faces. etc etc.

You tell him everything that is wrong early on in the project and he declined. You tell him as he's solidifying everything and he says something to the effect of "I'm no longer interested in your opinion on this subject." (what the alpha testers were told when Matt Firor wrecked things). At some point you say, "Fine, I don't want to be a part of this."

Four years later your cousin blames you for your brother in law's shitty back yard. His reason, "You should have gotten involved if you cared."

This is a story brought to you by story bricks (Erronius I literally don't know what they are and couldn't find any detail when I searched).

Tuco · Oct 15, 2015

Faith_sl said:
Yeah but thats the problem, just *what* is a good Fallout MMO? Gunplay? Humor? Exploration? VAT or FPS? City or desert?

Fallout would not feel like Fallout, to me, if it was overran by people in raid-level powerarmor wasting the gangs and enclave all over the place. It would have to be such a huge area to explore, and a very limited number of players allowed on each server, that the whole point of being an MMO would be negated. You would need to make surviving the wasteland just as hard as shooting down super mutants, and that would not happen if you meet another person every 10 meters.

A Co-op Fallout however... that would possibly work.

In the existing Skyrim/FO3 type game a coop game or ~100 person multiplayer on a map that resets often would be amazing.

But they could make a much more sandbox-driven open world game that would be great as an MMO. I've listed out several incredible ways this couold happen in the ESO thread, but it all boils down to a simulation of a world and letting the players drive it in ways nobody has tried in MMOs.

I think Crowfall will be the first group that I've seen to try giving players that much control and they're only willing to do it because they will be resetting the world.

Faith · Oct 15, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
In the existing Skyrim/FO3 type game a coop game or ~100 person multiplayer on a map that resets often would be amazing.

But they could make a much more sandbox-driven open world game that would be great as an MMO. I've listed out several incredible ways this couold happen in the ESO thread, but it all boils down to a simulation of a world and letting the players drive it in ways nobody has tried in MMOs.

I think Crowfall will be the first group that I've seen to try giving players that much control and they're only willing to do it because they will be resetting the world.

I like the idea behind Crowfall, for a PvP driven game. As you say, they can do it because they use "world reset" and can adjust their system as they go and see what works and do not work. For a full-blown MMO you can not reset the world, and experience has shown that an open world MMO will turn into "one faction/clan/guild/race dominates the world while everyone else changes server...leading to a ghost town and server change for that guild/clan/faction...and the cycle repeats itself".

I think a multiplayer Fallout would be best handled like a mix of Fallout 3 and Borderlands. Up to 4 players co-op against a world that saves changes/progress, hosted by one of the players.

Tuco · Oct 15, 2015

Faith_sl said:
I like the idea behind Crowfall, for a PvP driven game. As you say, they can do it because they use "world reset" and can adjust their system as they go and see what works and do not work. For a full-blown MMO you can not reset the world, and experience has shown that an open world MMO will turn into "one faction/clan/guild/race dominates the world while everyone else changes server...leading to a ghost town and server change for that guild/clan/faction...and the cycle repeats itself".

This discussion might be better off in the CF thread but screw it, just don't tell amod.

I think that if they don't mess it up CF will move the MMO genre forward both in terms of showing how much fun it can be with true sandbox control over the world and relaxing people's beliefs of the damage of resets. I agree that not all MMOs can reset their world without consequence, but I think frequent (1+ times a month) game-changing events that shake things up should be a big part of future MMOs.

radditsu · Oct 15, 2015

Faith_sl said:
Yeah but thats the problem, just *what* is a good Fallout MMO? Gunplay? Humor? Exploration? VAT or FPS? City or desert?

Fallout would not feel like Fallout, to me, if it was overran by people in raid-level powerarmor wasting the gangs and enclave all over the place. It would have to be such a huge area to explore, and a very limited number of players allowed on each server, that the whole point of being an MMO would be negated. You would need to make surviving the wasteland just as hard as shooting down super mutants, and that would not happen if you meet another person every 10 meters.

A Co-op Fallout however... that would possibly work.

Make it faction based, Brotherhood of Steel Raids raider camps/ vaults and gets the old High Tech equipment. Raiders raid NPC and PC camps for supplies. Civilian/Followers of the Apocalypse (merchant faction) defend against raiders and try to create caravans and build back the wasteland. NCR twarts the brotherhood and tries to save civilians. ETC ETC.

Vaclav · Oct 15, 2015

Tuco_sl said:
Four years later your cousin blames you for your brother in law's shitty back yard. His reason, "You should have gotten involved if you cared."

Eh, maybe things have changed since when I was working next door to Zeni and harassing them every so often (~8 yrs ago now) but back then I can't recall a time they didn't have a BethSoft visitor when I came over to bug old friends.

Sure, maybe ability to intervene was limited or whatever - and quite possibly they were nobodies (no one I remember for sure) - but the two used to be quite resource tied. I believe they used to quote that EVERY art asset in Oblivion was created at Zenimax for example. They might be more independent now, but they used to be two hands working in tandem for sure.

This is a story brought to you by story bricks (Erronius I literally don't know what they are and couldn't find any detail when I searched).

Did you follow EQN at all? It was what was going to run their dynamic quest system...

Tuco · Oct 15, 2015

Zenimax created an entirely new studio, Zenimax Online Studios, to make ESO. I wouldn't be surprised if few of your buddies were part of that.

Caliane · Oct 15, 2015

I think if you make a Fallout mmo, you just don't make it active pvp. have the pvp, be economic, etc. but not actively fighting, have that be co-op. use a vats hybrid for psuedo turnbased tactical play.

Fallout 4

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