Random Thoughts – Randocity!

This is my final review of and rant for Fallout 76. As of the recent Fall update for Fallout 76 (Wastelanders Season 2), Bethesda has taken it upon themselves to make some very questionable and disingenuous changes to the “balance” of the game. Let’s explore just how cringeworthy this game has become.

Level above 200

If you have a character with a level above 200, you’ll probably have noticed a number of “balance” changes to the game. Formerly, the game spawned a maximum of around level 68 for most humanoid enemy characters in Fallout 76. After the most recent update, the enemy level cap has been raised to 100. Not only has this update to the enemy level changed the balance of the game for the worse, it has reduced the effectiveness of the biggest guns in Fallout 76.

In effect, Bethesda has heavily nerfed every weapon in the game so that they are incredibly ineffective against these newly updated enemies whose levels have been majorly increased for no reason.

This is not just an inconvenience, it’s sloppy and makes the game unnecessarily harder to play without a way to disable this increase in hardness. Effectively, Bethesda has broken the game. There’s no other way to say it.

Level 50 weapons

The maximum level of any weapon in Fallout 76 is 50. You simply can’t find a weapon with a higher level than 50. Some top out at level 45. Yet, Bethesda has increased most enemy levels to well over 100 in many cases (assuming the player is over level 100), thus making these level 50 weapons even more ineffective than they already were. Yes, this applies to Legendary weapons as well.

What I mean is that before this update, I could one shot most level 68 enemies in the game with a level 50 Legendary rifle. The maximum level you’d find on most enemies would be level 68. After this update, most humanoid enemies spawn at 100 which takes two, three or more shots to kill on a level 100 enemy.

By changing the max levels of spawned enemies, Bethesda has inadvertently (or maybe intentionally) nerfed every weapon in the game. These weapons are, in fact, nerfed so hard as to be almost as useful as a level 1 rifle of the same class. Many weapons can take 5-6 shots for a kill which formerly took one or two shots. This allows enemies to swarm you, thus making the game even harder for characters above level 100.

Level 200+ characters revisited

With all of the above said, let’s circle back around to a player character that’s level 200 or above. Rant on. Player character levels in Fallout 76 are effectively useless. In any other RPG, levels add strength, power and perks. In Fallout 76, it’s just a number.

The player character is actually only as powerful as the weapon level they wield. If the weapon is level 50, then the player character’s power to play the game is entirely tied to that weak ass weapon. The player’s level 250 or 300 number means nothing. It’s just a number and doesn’t at all play into the strength and power of the character. It’s a pointless number. The only number that matters is the weapon’s level.

Since the max weapon level in Fallout 76 is level 50, that means that any increase in enemy strength, enemy level and enemy HP means making the already weak level 50 weapons even weaker.

In Fallout 76, it’s the weapon’s level that matters. Because Bethesda has raised the spawn level of enemies for high level characters, it has effectively made having high level characters useless and pointless. The level 250 player character is entirely limited by those weak ass level 50 weapons, now even more than ever.

Penalizing High Level Players

Some of us have spent months (or years) leveling our characters to 200, then 250 and higher. Yet, the best that Bethesda can reward our time and effort is to weaken our weapons and turn our 250 character into a level 20 character again? Stupid.

Bethesda’s handling of the Fallout 76 franchise is not only stupid, it’s probably one of the absolute worst installments in the Fallout franchise bar none. Not only is Bethesda penalizing those of us who have spent months grinding our characters to higher levels, but it goes way beyond this.

Fallout 76 is supposed to be a prequel to Fallout 1, 2, 3, 4, New Vegas and likely 5 and the rest. Yet, so much swag has been introduced into Fallout 76 that has never appeared in the sequels, it doesn’t make any sense to be in Fallout 76. How can we have Nuka-Cola Scorched that has never appeared in Fallout 3 or 4 or any other installment?

It gets even worse. Fallout 76 ultimately doesn’t make any sense as to why it even exists in the Fallout franchise. It doesn’t add anything to the series. The Scorched don’t make any sense as they have never appeared in any sequel games. The only carryovers are the Ghouls, Super Mutants and the factions. Even the Blood Eagles don’t make sense as they have never been in any of the sequels.

Cartoonish

With every step Bethesda takes, they seem to fumble the ball every single time. Fallout 76 is a weak installment. Not only does it make no sense to even exist in the Fallout universe, its reason to exist is so shallow and laughable, this entire game is a cartoon.

It’s what someone might think a Fallout game is if they didn’t know anything and asked someone to explain it in one sentence. The premise in Fallout 76 is so weak, it’s a caricature of Fallout.

The premise of Fallout 4 was tied to a serious tone and kept the idea behind the nuclear apocalypse somber and in-check. Yet, in Fallout 76, it’s all happy-go-lucky as if the bombs dropping were a mere inconvenience.

The 24

The premise of Fallout 76 was to insert 24 real live players into a multiplayer Fallout world. Unfortunately, Bethesda’s shortsightedness got in the way of making this into a great game.

The multiplayer point to Fallout 76 is that each of the 24 people will exit the vault and begin rebuilding Appalachia. Unfortunately, there isn’t any rebuilding that is actually allowed. Sure, each of those 24 people could build a super tiny little cabin on a super tiny piece of land. As a result of this overly tiny constrained land, you can’t actually rebuild anything in Appalachia.

All other buildings remain busted, broken and dilapidated. There’s no way to fix them. Instead, the best each of those 24 players can do is build a me-camp. The only thing these me-camps do is clutter up the landscape. Worse, you can’t even build your camp near most structures as the game prevents that. This means that while the point is to rebuild, you can’t actually do it.

Worse, even if you manage to follow the main quest line through to completion and “get rid of” the Scorched virus, nothing in the landscape changes. All of the burnt, destroyed buildings and structures remain. Building a me-camp doesn’t fix or solve anything. Even then, these camps are only visible and useful so long as the user remains actively online playing. When the player logs out, so too do any structures disappear from the game.

Pointless

Ultimately, Fallout 76 is a pointless, vapid, hollow game with absolutely no reason to exist in the franchise and also has no redeeming merit, especially after this latest update. It doesn’t further the franchise in any useful, or more importantly, functional way. Any lore built is inserted in such a way as to be pointless in the end. None of the lore solves anything. In fact, we don’t learn anything in Fallout 76 that we didn’t already learn in Fallout 4.

The entire Fallout 76 game is money-grubbing exercise in futility.

Standalone Game

Bethesda needs to package up a standalone version of Fallout 76 that doesn’t require the Internet. Then, let us download our characters onto this standalone version so we can at least save all of the progress we have made with our characters. Otherwise, when Bethesda shuts down the Fallout 76 servers (and they will), any characters we have built will be lost.

Done with Fallout 76

Because Bethesda’s continually keeps screwing us players with every release, I’ve given up playing Fallout 76. This latest update is actually the last straw. I’ve tried to be patient with Bethesda. I’ve really tried… but my patience has completely worn down. Not only is the game exceedingly old (coming up on 2 years), Bethesda has honestly done nothing of note to make the game actually better or more playable. Even Fallout 1st, Bethesda’s expensive monthly for-pay subscription service, has done almost nothing to further the playablity of the game.

In fact, the only thing they’ve done is make the game worse with each and every release. Case in point, Wastelanders. The name itself tells you that it’s a waste… and it is.

Wastelanders added nothing new to the story of the game. The only thing that was added were a bunch of pointless NPCs that serve entirely as newbie tutorials… as if Fallout 76 was complex enough to even need newbie tutorials. The game is so simplistic and easy to learn that adding NPC tutorials to the engine is about as useful as teaching a driving teacher how to drive. Yeah, pointless.

The rest of the NPCs that weren’t tutorials ended up being daily quest givers asking us to do the same thing every single day over and over and over and over…. the very definition of grinding. Yet, there’s a hard-set and overly long cooldown timer that forces us to wait many, many hours to grind again.

War Never Changes, and Bethesda Doesn’t Either

Bethesda just doesn’t get its gamers or its franchise fans. Bethesda also doesn’t get why this game should exist. It also certainly doesn’t reward its long standing players for playing. Oh, no no no. Instead, it chooses to slap us in the face with each and every new release. I’m tired of dealing with those shenanigans. Gamers who’ve been playing the game for months then log in only to find that their best weapons are now only mediocre trash and have been rendered entirely pointless. Have I mentioned just how pointless this game is?

Worse, Bethesda couldn’t be bothered to actually add a compensating control by adding newer, more powerful weapons into the game. No, they couldn’t be bothered to do that. Instead, they screw our level 250 characters over and then expect us to be happy about it? Well, I’m not… hence this article.

If Fallout 76 was a great game once, it is no longer a great game today. Arguably, it never was a good game. In fact, it is probably one of the worst games to consider getting anyone as a gift. It’s not a particularly great multiplayer game, but even more than that, it’s a piss poor entry into the Fallout universe.

If anything, Fallout 76 shows us just how disconnected from the original Fallout franchise source material as a Bethesda can get. The creators of Fallout 76 really have no idea what a Fallout game is. Fallout 76 is now officially and literally the worst Fallout game in the Fallout franchise bar none. Bethesda would do well to sack Todd Howard and find someone who can actually come up with game ideas that people actually want to play and that are befitting of Fallout’s original apocalyptic premise. Perhaps with Microsoft’s 2020 acquisition of Zenimax, Todd may finally find himself on the outs. As for what Microsoft’s acquisition means to the Fallout franchise or the Elder Scrolls, look for an upcoming Randocity article.

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