EFAP on Fallout

[Risewild]

Fallout 3 is barely played these days, it's the least popular 3D Fallout (on Steam it's 24 hours peak is barely 1600 players vs 18 000 for NV, 22 000 for 76 and over 50 000 for 4; on consoles it's probably even more skewed in 4's direction), so I think that's why it's doing better than 4.

Almost everyone who was critical of it when it came out has already forgotten about it, while most people who loved it don't tarnish their nostalgic memories by replaying.

Similarly with Oblivion vs Skyrim (600 vs 30 000 players).

Whatever novelty Fallout 3 had is long gone at this point, so what's left is a pretty bad game with horrid gameplay. New Vegas being played by many more people makes sense since it's the much better game that has far better content.

Fallout 4 might just have even worse writing than Fallout 3, but the not complete shit gameplay mixed with the settlement building pleases the casual players much more than whatever Fallout 3 does.

Don't forget that many (if not most) people playing Fallout 3 on PC these days do it using TTW. Many consider TTW the only way to play FO3 now, so the number of FO3 players also need to take into account some of the FNV player numbers. We also have to consider that many people play FO3 from GOG and Epic Store (especially since Epic gave both FO3 and FNV for free several times already and the last time was quite recently, IIRC).

I have the numbers and I can say that the TTW installer was downloaded more than 140.000 times in the last 3 months. So even if only 1/10 of those downloads are people actually playing TTW it's still more than 14.000 players of FO3 (in the last 3 months) that will never be accounted on Steam (because TTW runs on FNV and not FO3).

 

[Alphons]

Don't forget that many (if not most) people playing Fallout 3 on PC these days do it using TTW.

My thesis was about new players trying it for the first time or people that have not touched it since release returning to it after years.

Might be my personal bias, but I assumed that most TTW players replayed 3 a few times over the years before finding out about the mod like I did.

We also have to consider that many people play FO3 from GOG and Epic Store (especially since Epic gave both FO3 and FNV for free several times already and the last time was quite recently, IIRC).

Yeah, I completely forgot about the giveaways (even the recent Amazon one with GOG copies).

I have the numbers and I can say that the TTW installer was downloaded more than 140.000 times in the last 3 months.

Thanks for the information.
Do you have a way to compare it with last year or at least know how much the show release might have affected TTW's popularity? I remember a few articles recommending it as the best way to play 3 after the show's release.

Also a bit connected with the first paragraph- are there many people who play TTW and never played 3/ NV/ either of them before?

 

[Risewild]

Might be my personal bias, but I assumed that most TTW players replayed 3 a few times over the years before finding out about the mod like I did.

You would be surprised (I know I did) by how many people are asking on Reddit if they should play FO3 for the first time using TTW. And how many people are replying with "Yes".

Also, TTW is more known now because of an article (I think it was IGN that released it in April) named something like "The best way to play modded Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas in 2024". And they say the answer is TTW using the Begin Again Wabbajack mod list. So a lot of people that watched the TV show and searched the web for how to play FO3 in 2024 found that article.

After that article was released I saw a huge increase of people asking questions about TTW, but those questions are related to stuff TTW doesn't do and every time it's because they are using the "Begin Again" mod list.

Do you have a way to compare it with last year or at least know how much the show release might have affected TTW's popularity? I remember a few articles recommending it as the best way to play 3 after the show's release.

Unfortunately not. Our previous host didn't really kept download count for our installer. The team member paying the host could kinda calculate it depending on how much download data size would be used per month for the installer downloads, but I doubt he still has that data since we changed hosts 3 months ago. The new host does count the downloads the installer gets, so we do get the precise numbers now. Actually, I think the count is public on the TTW Installer download page, so anyone can see it too.

 

[SquidWard]

Fallout 3 definitely gets an amount of attention via TTW that shouldn't be glossed over.

Everything Rise is saying I've seen similar sentiment from players online. People say play TTW to play Fallout 3 almost every time Fallout 3 (on PC) gets brought up. And honestly, it's to the credit of y'all making a good mod (so props on that) and to the discredit of Microsoft for the Games for Windows Live platform and to Bethesda/Zenimax for going with that option when they could have simply, just released the game or even made it a Steam release. Oh and I'm pretty sure they've never gone back and patched that dead bloatware out of the download files. Hindsight is 20/20 but from what I understand, that service has severely put a dent in the notion you'd have an easy time buying Fallout 3 alone and playing it without modding and fucking around with fixes. I've even heard that the GOG version of Fallout 3 is a pain in the ass for some people due to the game and how it works on certain hardware.

Oh wait, I googled it to be sure and I see about 2-3 years ago they patched out GFWL? Good on them, only took them about 13 years. Insane to sell something that theoretically works out of the box but now doesn't because you left dead bloatware on it for a decade. Technically they didn't shut it down until sometime in 2020 but I can't even find games released for GFWL released past 2013 and even in that year the number of games that were on it were really low. Amazing Microsoft left that blight stay standing for 7 years really.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Moldaver literally says they're not communists

I keep forgetting that communists are like Vulcans. They never tell lies.

This show was written by liberals with educations in elite academies given a task to perform by Amazon, not by starving artists with Marxist sympathies.

The absolute hypocrisy of modern communists isn't lost on me. They claim to hate capitalism, but it's hard to find many corporations they don't support. It's also not lost on me that when the WEF put out that 10 things the future will be like, they mention that anything you use, you'll rent and it will be delivered by drone. Let's see, what company is it that has delivery drones?

18 000 for NV, 22 000 for 76

Well, that's sad.

Also, are sure Fallout 3 is doing a lot better than 4? Because I thought it was the other way around, because not only has the game's popularity dwindled, but I've seen people say that it's the weakest one out of the three Fallout games in the Bethesda Era.

No, what I'm saying is that Fallout 3 wasn't considered as lackluster as it was until New Vegas had a few patches in it. Fallout 4 didn't have a New Vegas to knock the luster off it's shiny coating, and Fallout 76 sure as Hell wasn't the next contender for the title - YET - you'll hardly find too many people singling it's praises anymore the way that they did when it first came out.

I also think the big bump in Fallout 4's new rival has everything to do with the TV show as opposed to people going back to it based on fond memories. They had those shiny keys dangled in front of them and they can't just watch the show they were told was great over and over again. And honestly, from what I've heard, the flaws are more apparent the second time through since you're done pointing at the stimpacks and bobbleheads at that point and the writing can really seep in.

 

[Bradylama]

I keep forgetting that communists are like Vulcans. They never tell lies.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.


Moldaver's group has a vague agenda, which is anti-war in general and anti-Vault-Tec specifically. Moldaver isn't a communist she's a vengeful corporate rival. Moldaver being a Vault-Tec executive is the best explanation for how she could survive while aging like Hank. She could have helped Rose escape by overriding the doors with executive privilege. We don't even know what it is that her faction wants in the present and practically all of them are dead already. Believe me, liberals do not believe in the sincerity of radical politics. They think communists and nazis are actually liberals at heart & don't really mean it. There is no actual communism in the show.

The absolute hypocrisy of modern communists isn't lost on me. They claim to hate capitalism, but it's hard to find many corporations they don't support. It's also not lost on me that when the WEF put out that 10 things the future will be like, they mention that anything you use, you'll rent and it will be delivered by drone. Let's see, what company is it that has delivery drones?

Delivery drones are a failing program anyway. I saw them doing the pilot program in Bentonville, the world HQ of Wal-Mart. The technology simply isn't there yet or may never be. The development of ECW means drones will be vulnerable to interception where a truck never will. There are no technical solutions to the capitalist crisis.

 

[TheKingofVault14]

No, what I'm saying is that Fallout 3 wasn't considered as lackluster as it was until New Vegas had a few patches in it. Fallout 4 didn't have a New Vegas to knock the luster off it's shiny coating, and Fallout 76 sure as Hell wasn't the next contender for the title - YET - you'll hardly find too many people singling it's praises anymore the way that they did when it first came out.

I also think the big bump in Fallout 4's new rival has everything to do with the TV show as opposed to people going back to it based on fond memories. They had those shiny keys dangled in front of them and they can't just watch the show they were told was great over and over again. And honestly, from what I've heard, the flaws are more apparent the second time through since you're done pointing at the stimpacks and bobbleheads at that point and the writing can really seep in.

Ah I see now, yep that makes a lot more sense by what you mean. Thanks for clarifying!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.

This typically waits for them to get a degree of power in whatever community they're in. Look at the Berkley "Free Speech Movement". It was never about free speech, it was about them wanting to be able to talk about communism up until the point where they have a majority in power in that institution and now it's all about censorship. In the setting of the TV show, which sucks, they're painting the pre-war United States, as you said, as a quasi-McCarthy Era world. As such, they have to be low key. Have small meetings in subdued locations. When they're talking to an outsider, which is the only point of view we're given since Cooper is the outsider, they're not going to put on their Lenin T-Shirts.

It's also interesting that the the writers, who are clearly leftist thinkers, think that we'll eventually sympathize with Moldaver who has the "By Any Means Necessary" mindset. She hatches this elaborate plan to kidnap Hank involving pretending to be Vault 32 dwellers, then killing a whole bunch of Vault 33 people while sacrificing her own people when she could have just snuck in to Vault 33 using Rose's Pipboy and kidnapped him.

 

[PlanHex]

the writers, who are clearly leftist thinkers

Yeah, it's like that thing Marx said: "the workers should seize the means of production by turning all farming into shitting farms that collect protein from the flies attracted by shit"


I don't think they're much of leftists or thinkers tbh

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I don't think they're much of leftists or thinkers tbh

They're clearly not thinkers, because that idea is ridiculously stupid. I know they did it because they thought it was funny, because bodily functions are funny, but it's not absurdly funny at all. It's just absurd. And retarded. Very, very retarded.

 

[Bradylama]

This typically waits for them to get a degree of power in whatever community they're in. Look at the Berkley "Free Speech Movement". It was never about free speech, it was about them wanting to be able to talk about communism up until the point where they have a majority in power in that institution and now it's all about censorship. In the setting of the TV show, which sucks, they're painting the pre-war United States, as you said, as a quasi-McCarthy Era world. As such, they have to be low key. Have small meetings in subdued locations. When they're talking to an outsider, which is the only point of view we're given since Cooper is the outsider, they're not going to put on their Lenin T-Shirts.

OK so they turn their T-Shirts inside out and there's Lenin's face embroidered on them. What does that mean for the TV show? What does Lenin have to say about Vault-Tec? Your anticommunist paranoia is inventing a scenario that has no bearing on the plot whatsoever. Moldaver's group simply aren't communists, they're Hollywood liberals who just so happen to be correct about Vault-Tec being evil and a major driver of the war because Moldaver has the inside scoop.

It's also interesting that the the writers, who are clearly leftist thinkers

You think Jonathan Nolan, Robertson-Dworet, and Wagner are leftist thinkers? They make blockbusters and Marvel slop. A real leftist thinker would express some kind of leftist or revolutionary politics, but the show has an anti-political stance, which is a delusion that's only possible from the standpoint of liberal hegemony.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

A real leftist thinker would express some kind of leftist or revolutionary politics, but the show has an anti-political stance

Did you miss the whole "Capitalism BAD" theme of the show? The entire show is 8 hours of propaganda with stimpacks and power armor. The whole point of the Vault-Tec vault group was to create "super managers", i.e. the "bourgeoisie" to rule over the rest of the wasteland. The only reason why they didn't just outright use the words "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat" is because kids these days aren't educated enough to know what these terms mean.

 

[Bradylama]

Did you miss the whole "Capitalism BAD" theme of the show? The entire show is 8 hours of propaganda with stimpacks and power armor. The whole point of the Vault-Tec vault group was to create "super managers", i.e. the "bourgeoisie" to rule over the rest of the wasteland. The only reason why they didn't just outright use the words "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat" is because kids these days aren't educated enough to know what these terms mean.

"Capitalism bad" doesn't mean anything without some kind of political proscription to resolve its externalities. The show has no proscriptive solution to the Vault-Tec problem because it's completely unavoidable. If communism isn't an alternative, and capitalism won't regulate itself, then the only possible solution is that the right people in the right positions do the right thing because it's morally correct and the right thing to do. It's circular logic that keeps coming back to liberalism being the solution to all its problems. The show invents a managerial ideology as a reflection of "Professional Managerial Class" theory, which was really popular among social democrats who resent their bosses more than the capitalists who boss the bosses. It's a purely interpersonal understanding of capitalism.