Over 600 hours of Fallout 76 played... ask me anything

[Korin]

Yes, this is real. I've been playing since open beta:

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I've lived through the worst Fallout release in history. I've suffered wave after wave of minor to game breaking bugs (one of which literally disabled my characters for several days). I've played when dupers were so rampant they literally crashed the servers. I've seen it all and yet I'm still playing (as are a couple hundred thousand other people). The game has a bad rep but Youtubers and game journalists also make a living by shoveling half-informed outrage for clicks and subscriptions and many of them base their content around posts on the sub-reddit and not from actual experience. Ask me anything and I'll give you my honest opinion, tell you whether it's actually true, as bad as it sounded or if it's horseshit.

Disclaimer: I am not going to argue whether the game is good or not or whether you should enjoy it. Those are subjective determinations. If you don't like Bethesda open world games or what they do with Fallout, you will definitely not like Fallout 76. If you ever thought Fallout 2 jumped the shark with stupid shit like a chess playing radscorpion then you aren't going to believe some of the weird shit that's in this game. I can however dispel any myths or clarify things you've heard about the game so that your gem of hatred is as glitteringly accurate as possible.

 

[Ediros]

How The hell did you get 600 hours in this game?

I am genuinely curious. I couldn't last 100 hours in shitout 4, all that was left were radiant quests. And this game had npcs, even if horrible.

So, yeah, how?

 

[Korin]

How The hell did you get 600 hours in this game?
I am genuinely curious. I couldn't last 100 hours in shitout 4, all that was left were radiant quests. And this game had npcs, even if horrible.
So, yeah, how?

Fallout 76 is styled more like an MMO than single player, so even though a lot of the static quests are finite there are a lot of daily quests and activities, along with pvp (Survival mode/Nuclear Winter/workshops), a dungeon raid (Vault 94) and community events like meat week. There's also a lot of repeatable/random events that happen in game and they recently added a "public event" notification that lets you know when one spawns so you can join other people to complete them. Additionally there's the C.A.M.P. system and I've probably spent at least 100 hours doing that alone. You can check out some of my camp builds here. People make a lot of really cool camps, this being one of the most ridiculous ones I've seen recently:

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https://twitter.com/Y6V2Z74C8ONgZgi/status/1129331636036808704

I tried 5 or 6 times to finish Fallout 4 but just got too bored/didn't care about the main quest.

 

[Big No]

I've got probably a stupid question, but are energy weapons in the game? I have literally not seen any gameplay or screenshots of folks using plasma rifles, pistols, laser weapons, etc. All stuff I see from videos are people bumming around with hunting rifles and pipe guns.

I'm probably just lazy and haven't had the drive to actually check despite the ease I could do so but if you've played 600 hours then surely you'd know.

 

[Atomkilla]

Call it morbid curiosity, but how did they explain that endgame dragon boss?

 

[Korin]

I've got probably a stupid question, but are energy weapons in the game? I have literally not seen any gameplay or screenshots of folks using plasma rifles, pistols, laser weapons, etc. All stuff I see from videos are people bumming around with hunting rifles and pipe guns.

I'm probably just lazy and haven't had the drive to actually check despite the ease I could do so but if you've played 600 hours then surely you'd know.

They're in the game but probably the reason you don't see them often is because most of them aren't very good. Because of how damage resistances work, pistols (and most any light ballistic/energy damage weapon) isn't viable against an opponent that has even average resistance. Energy weapons in particular suffered from some additional issues because there were no perks or legendary affixes (example: an energy weapon with "anti-armor" as an attribute couldn't actually use it) which would allow them to penetrate energy resistance, something they only fixed recently. Heavy energy weapons were alright before and are actually quite viable now. Heavy energy weapons, especially with the armor changes, are pretty beastly. Anecdotally I think the condition deterioration of heavy energy weapons might still be inconveniently high and I remembered this being a problem before. My gatling plasma breaks extremely fast. Also I think the flamer is technically an energy weapon and this has sucked since day one. If I have 1000 ammo for a flamer I probably won't be able to use more than 300 of it before the damn thing breaks. I would toss it out except I have a legacy explosive version of the flamer (the affix doesn't even make sense for what the weapon does) and for the time it actually does work it's pretty fun.

That being said, my experience with energy weapons is not comprehensive. There are some very rare, legacy energy weapons that are considered ridiculous, primarily energy weapons with the explosive affix. There may be more viable energy weapon builds but none that are considered the common meta.

TL;DR: Most energy weapons suck unless they have either very specific affixes or are one of the few energy weapons that are balanced fairly well (mostly heavy weapons)

 

[Korin]

Call it morbid curiosity, but how did they explain that endgame dragon boss?

The short version is the Enclave did it

I'll be honest and say I didn't follow the lore that closely (as to remember it in detail anyway) which is not to say there isn't any lore. Actually, I found Fallout 76 probably did a better job with the lore (for that game) than Fallout 3 and 4 did. The problem was the entirety of it was crammed into holotapes, computer terminals and notes.

It's a shame they didn't take that level of detail and then apply it to NPCs because that would have really helped. The scorched plague, scorchbeasts and Scorchbeast Queen were actually explained and you sort of unravel and piece together that story through several of the main faction questlines (from the perspective of the Overseer, Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave, Free States and some other people). I would say the story was actually interesting but the delivery of it was difficult for me (I have moderate ADHD so getting me to just sit and listen or read is a challenge). Much of the lack of NPCs is implied by the scorched plague and many settlements were wiped out by the plague, scorchbeasts or by the Scorchbeast Queen herself. The timeline that you play is sometime after these survivors have already died or left.

It doesn't surprise me when a lot of people feel like there is no story or that parts of the game either didn't make sense or weren't explained. It was explained but you'd have to literally read every single terminal and note across several separate faction quest lines.

 

[VaultNoodles]

Is there any point to base building in it? From stuff I've seen it has even less of a point than it did in Fallout 4 because it regularly resets. I could be missing something though, I don't know much about the game.

 

[The_Time_Master]

I stopped playing when the carrying weight bug got patched out preventing infinite carry weight. It simply got un-fun with item degradation - how did you get fun managing weight when the limit was so tiny compared to the amount of the amount of armor repair you needed to do / weapon repair?

 

[KingArthur]

@Korin I have but one question... are you, like, ok? Is Todd holding a gun to your head? Or do you legitimately enjoy Fallout 76?

 

[TheGM]

Is there any point to base building in it? From stuff I've seen it has even less of a point than it did in Fallout 4 because it regularly resets. I could be missing something though, I don't know much about the game.

to store and manage your stuff, that's about it. I've seen some really big bases but they are all huge empty rooms.

 

[Korin]

Is there any point to base building in it?

There's a lot of reasons to use the C.A.M.P. system, the primary reason is that it's your home base where all of your crafting benches and access to your stashed equipment and materials is located. This is also the location of your vendor machines, so if you plan to sell items you've gathered you'll need to have a camp set up with items and prices selected. Sleeping in your C.A.M.P. bed gives bonus experience for an hour or so and playing an instrument gives you a second action point regen bonus for about an hour.

Secondary purposes are just for the fun of it. I've built a lot of oddity camps as player death traps:

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And some as even odder oddities:

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From stuff I've seen it has even less of a point than it did in Fallout 4 because it regularly resets. I could be missing something though, I don't know much about the game.

Your C.A.M.P. doesn't ever reset or disappear. It only moves if you want it to. What can happen sometimes is you may join a server where someone is occupying your camp location already, in which case the game will not place your camp and will suggest you either move it or join another server. Moving your camp in one piece can be hit and miss depending how complex your camp structure is, ex: if you have a lot of camp objects integrated into the environment (like a tree house).

 

[Korin]

I stopped playing when the carrying weight bug got patched out preventing infinite carry weight. It simply got un-fun with item degradation - how did you get fun managing weight when the limit was so tiny compared to the amount of the amount of armor repair you needed to do / weapon repair?

The stash size has been increased from 400 to 800 over time. I don't find there is a problem with the weight limit currently but I would also still like more stash space. Most people have gotten used to the idea that you can't (and don't need) to keep absolutely everything. You also learn how to get the most out of your weight limits by making sure to scrap junk (it weighs significantly less as raw scrap) and how to package it in bulk (bulk lead weighs less than raw lead). There's a lot of scrap that isn't necessary and can just be sold to a vendor. Nobody really needs 6000 screws, it's best to set limits on items and say "I won't store more than 100". I recommend watching a few episode of Marie Kondo.

Most of my stash problems are from all of the legendary items I've picked up that I haven't gotten around to selling.

 

[Korin]

@Korin I have but one question... are you, like, ok? Is Todd holding a gun to your head? Or do you legitimately enjoy Fallout 76?

Yes, I legitimately like Fallout 76. I am however painfully aware of all the problems in the game as I have to suffer them directly :p

 

[Korin]

to store and manage your stuff, that's about it. I've seen some really big bases but they are all huge empty rooms.

There are a lot of really cool camps but also a lot of mediocre ones. That is entirely up to each player. This is my camp for Halloween:

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The camp I had before this one:

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[SquidWard]

Most people have gotten used to the idea that you can't (and don't need) to keep absolutely everything.

Yeah, I don't get that. The game seems to hand out enough random resources. The bigger issue I saw was that some equipment required a good bit of stuff to maintain them and keeping enough of that stuff readily available seemed annoying. That and between wanting to stock resources for maintenance and then also have some stuff to keep made your stash fill up quickly.

 

[Korin]

Yeah, I don't get that. The game seems to hand out enough random resources. The bigger issue I saw was that some equipment required a good bit of stuff to maintain them and keeping enough of that stuff readily available seemed annoying. That and between wanting to stock resources for maintenance and then also have some stuff to keep made your stash fill up quickly.

I've heard that said before but I never seem to run out of anything. It might be the weapons I use decay slowly (gatling guns) as does the armor (usually power armor). There are a number of perks that make repairs cheaper, double item condition on repair and make the items lose CND more slowly though.

 

[SquidWard]

I've heard that said before but I never seem to run out of anything. It might be the weapons I use decay slowly (gatling guns) as does the armor (usually power armor). There are a number of perks that make repairs cheaper, double item condition on repair and make the items lose CND more slowly though.

I hardly played it, so that was just my initial reaction to it. So, fair enough. I just noticed once I got past the basic weapons and got things like laser weapons, I couldn't find the crystals often enough to keep it from breaking and becoming an annoyance. You obviously have more experience with the game and I'll take your word on that.

 

[Korin]

I hardly played it, so that was just my initial reaction to it. So, fair enough. I just noticed once I got past the basic weapons and got things like laser weapons, I couldn't find the crystals often enough to keep it from breaking and becoming an annoyance. You obviously have more experience with the game and I'll take your word on that.

They tweaked weapon CND and repair costs along the way so it likely doesn't work the same as it did when you played. CND perks were a must-have at some point but I never use them myself in the current version of the game.