So, update from me. I bought the game..... It's fallout and I wanted to try it for my self since most of it here (from me too) have been conjecture based on videos. And after I found out one video was shared where he was very negative was based on a test where they limited it to 30fps on purpose (due to a bug) on the PC, I figured I'd see what all the fuss was about myself and make my own opinion.
My takeaway after around 6-7 hours total in the beta
Graphical:
- FPS: It runs well on my 1080GTX. It never dips below 60 that I can see at least.
- Popins: Noticeable and while structures seem to load fine, you do notice that shadows need a far larger draw distance than what they currently have.
- On max graphical settings, it looks like Fallout 4 with slightly sharper textures, but quite often you see what looks like much lower polygon textures. Mainly on slightly larger static objects like broken cars and the likes.
Combat:
- It feels floaty? if it lags a bit. Yesterday there was an hour or two where the sever seemed to lag, where enemies kinda rubberbanded a bit to where aiming didn't really feel natural. More like regular aiming was like the auto aim from VATS.
- VATS appeared fairly useless unless you get the perk to target individual parts.
- You have a lot of HP and while in the opening you feel fairly invincible, that starts to change when you start moving towards areas with higher level enemies. I think the entire starting area is scaled for this. You can encounter rare\boss enemies (marked with an icon in the name), but they don't really have more HP than the regular mobs. At level 3 I encountered a group of level 3 mobs with one level 9 with them, and hitting the level 9 mob it took exactly as much damage as the level 3 ones.
- Sometimes combat feels good (no lag, hit them and they react accordingly.). Good as in a regular single player Fallout.
- PvP starts at level 5, and if you clear out an area where there is a workshop (will get a quest to do so), you can activate that area for you, but you get a message that if you do that (costs 25 caps) other players can attack you to steal it from you
Exploration\survival:
- New Fallout. New areas. Interesting small things all over the place. It made me want to see more.
- Some things "trigger" at quests. I saw a corpse in the river, couldn't do anything. Later got a quest to find something on it and there were items to loot.
- Quests and things to do everywhere (no idea if this also applies to late game areas.)
- Other players were never intrusive when I played. Nobody ever attacked me, but some came to my aid when I started running away from 5-6 dogs and trained into some rats which aggroed some robots and some ghouls. Enemies also attacked each other.
- Didn't get far enough to where survival was much else than eating food\drink when they got so low as to having an impact on my AP.
- Going above the weight limit will drain your AP while moving, then move slow while it charges up to half, then go down again. There are several places with a stash chest for you to add your loot to your own stash (including the workshops you can claim), but you can also just summon your camp and quickly add your stuff to that.
Building:
- Didn't do much of it. Worked fine, and looks like a lot of options. Far more than base Fallout 4. Can't say anything about how it works when moving a large base. Some reported their bases having disappeared when moving them. However, there is 10? presets you can save which I think will instantly load up a base preset you've made.
Misc:
- The lag on the server yesterday bugged looting a bit. When looking at things that normally had loot, the "load" icon for loot just kept spinning. Think of it like when WoW launched and loot was broken. Difference here is that it doesn't bug your character in a crouched position. Objects in the world worked fine to pick up with no lag in looting.
- Can fast travel to events (similar to Destiny events). Costs a few caps
- Perk system seems interesting. However, there is no way, no how, that they don't let you buy "card packs" as micro transactions at some point. At level 5 you get a "pack" of cards which looked random and I got one gold\rare card.
- Control system on keyboard is fine until you enter the base mechanic. Key commands don't feel natural at all, and it screams "This UI is built for a controller with triggers".
Overall:
It was fun. I love exploring, and enjoyed what I played of it. Not near the clusterf* I thought it would be. I still think it will be a F2P game and will go down in price by Christmas, but I will have put lots of hours in it by then. However (for me), I don't see much longevity in it other than exploring it like I would a regular Fallout game. I don't care if the PvP works, not interested in that at all. I just know that it felt like a Fallout game when exploring it.
The last part said however, it does feel weird not having any living NPCs there. Not sure how to explain it. It's like running around in a fail-state world. Where every audio log you find, be they hopeful, scared or whatever, you know they are gone\dead. There is no good guy\bad guy. You can't listen to an audio log or radio station distress signal and think "I will save you!", because there is no-one to save. I get they want the "players" to be the reactive world, but for someone like me who would like the option to turn off all other players .... you will notice it. It's "empty" even though it is filled with stuff to do. It's more like an archaeologist digging up info on what happened in the past rather than living in a world that reacts to your actions.
TL;DR
I don't regret the purchase. I look forwards to the 14th and will put many hours into it. I think the people who want PvP will be more disappointed than the PvE people who just want a new Fallout to explore.