No Mutants Allowed

The game is the usual Bethesda fan fare where you just kinda keep playing until you wonder... Why? Why are you still playing? What is the goal now that you've done the main quest? There's no big finalé, not even an Autobot moment.

You just keep playing, looking for content and because of how dry the end games content is you'll be coming back day after day to get that 'drip' of content. See it has daily limits to things so you can only achieve so much before it's run dry again.

So you come back again and again and again and again, forming a pattern of behavior in your daily routine. And since Fallout 1st is almost a necessity to play the game with any level of convenience you'll likely cave in and pay for it and once you do it's too convenient to stop.

And along with that Fallout 1st benefit is free atoms. The free atoms is basically that sample of a drug. Hey, it's on the house, just give it a try. And as you start to invest more and more of your time in the game you start to get this itching for content.

That's when it gets you hooked. The atom shop is designed around FOMO and while I was looking for deals on it the itching became too much at times and me with my addictive ass caved in and started to go "well, I've stopped buying tons of games on sale so technically this would just be me burning money on the same thing, right?"

Fallout 76 is maliciously designed. It is designed as an addiction machine, trying to lure you in with Fallout 1st and then trying to lure you in with the free samples of atoms to spend. It is designed to prey on people like me who even though our subconscious is telling us it is a bad idea still go through with it anyway. Cause that dopamine's guuud shit.

Now I knew it was a bad idea and because of Fallout 76 being the perfect game to just zombie out to while I listened to podcasts I ignored and pushed away these thoughts so it's completely my own fault for giving into it as much as I did. But that doesn't mean it isn't designed maliciously.

For the past 6 months there's been tons of outreach from the community on their forums to alter certain bullshit design choices that make the game actively anti-fun because those feed into the addiction machine. And they've done fuck all to change any of it. Oh but the moment throwing knives could be exploited for exp then they rushed to cancel the ability to craft them.

That was 3 weeks ago by the way. For three weeks throwing items has been removed from the crafting table and they've done fuck all to fix anything.

Fallout 76 is great as a game to turn off your brain to and just kinda 'do things' with your hands to keep them occupied while you focus on podcasts and youtube commentaries and stuff. But the way that the game is designed to try and lure you in to the addiction machine in end game.... Stay away from it.

It's too bad too because it could be great. Not as a Fallout game or even an RPG, god no. Never ever expect that from any Bethesda studio. But as a roam around a wasteland just kinda zombieing out while listening to actual stuff of substance? Could be great. It would be so easy to fix the game too. Could even keep the fucking atom shop. Just adjust the prices in it.

Oh and I forgot, the straw that broke the camels back is this: Bethesda.net is shutting down all it's forums apart from the ESO forum. So basically, the official place for us to come and give feedback to a live service game (that they barely listened to in the first place) is now shutting down and getting replaced with discord servers. Because a chat is a great alternative for discussions.

It's not like when you make a big detailed post criticizing something in a chat that it gets pushed into oblivion by shitposting. Nooooooo. Course not. So yeah, that should tell you what they think of player input. They don't fucking care. The same issues we've asked for change for for the past 6 months has gone on deaf ears and they can't even fix a fucking crafting exp bug in a months time.

But you bet your ass that that atom shop keeps on-a churning. FOMO'ing every week.

implying there is anything in the atomshop ever worth buying.