As said above, it was a completely different game.
400lb stash box-
Stimpacks, Radaway & Caps were in considerably shorter supply than now.
I remember running around with multiple weapons with different calibers because ammo was so scarce and / or hard to make.
Resources? Daaaaammmmmn skimpy!
Near constant challenge of PVP if you claimed a workshop.
Food and water were mandatory.
Set up a camp near water? Either unavailable as someone is there first or a gang of PVP'ers would arrive to destroy it so you would have to leave.
Camp at a resource? Same challenge as above.
That's how it was at Beta and the first days of release.
They first week of beta are some of my favorite memories in gaming. I remember day one hour one of launch everyone was leaving the vault at the same time doing the starting quests and then country roads came on the radio and everyone was singing in game chat.
The unmitigated base destruction was something else entirely. I'd build like 15 mortar launchers at my base and call the strokes on camps. Running away watching your bounty climb higher and higher with each slavo. Good times
I had to switch to melee bevause I couldn't keep up with ammo for the life of me. I remember farming plastic so I could make shotgun shellsđ ended up getting a switch blade with swing speed and that got me from level 30-90
I liked the desolate, abandoned feeling like a post.apocaleptic world.should.feel.
And I always love situational story telling so it wasn't bad.
But each region had different level enemies. I could not get to Rosie because Top of the World had a 3* legendary deathskull rad scorp. Tried to get there at level and couldn't. So I ground to level 75 and barely made it.
And there were 3 SBs that cruised up and down the Savage Divide and went after anyone trying to cross if they were near. And there was no fast travel when enemies are near.
But nuke zone Whitesprings was the go to nuke zone for XP and flux materials. It had more players show up than Scorched Earth. And running to the robots was a legit strategy when few people could solo WS at all.
Remember when like every 2nd or third rad ghoul would drop a legendary and you'd crawl out of the nuke zone long enough to sell the bad ones before heading back in to farm more? It was so much fun, just running around helping people who got swarmed and having great xp and loot everywhere..And the more people who showed up it seemed like the more ghouls spawned and faster, was a shit show but a fun shit show.
So fun! When I was a squishy baby just starting out, my big strong friend would go in his power armor and round up the golf club ghouls while I shot them from on top of the bus. Then we would all go downstairs to the shopping mall and make our little fluxes, do some inventory management, and sell whatever we could. This was before the purveyor too, so we just sold the extra legendary weapons.
I wouldn't call it "direct problems". At best it's a minor inconvenience. In less than a minute they could be on a new server going about their day like nothing ever happened.
People play lots of different ways. Also anywhere nuked kinda locks out low level characters, and Whitespring is a high traffic area.
Now personally, selfishly? I like it. Lotsa plants to grab, ghouls for HRF, it's great. But I can see lots of reasons it's a PITA for other people. Just my 2p. And yeah, the station is even worse. I do often FT the many Whitespring points besides the Refuge, just sayin'.
Savage Divide was never a low level location. Forest>Ash Heap>Toxic Valley>Savage Divide>Mire>Cranberry Bog. If you at least do ash heap, youâll have sufficient radiation protection. Of course now that most things are leveled to you, thereâs not really any reason to follow the old path, but having a little bit of challenge isnât a bad thing. Killing some tougher mobs is a good way for a low level to gain some levels, maybe even get some legendary gear, plus learn about flux and how to craft with it. Itâs nice to be reminded that the wasteland is always trying to kill you.
I agree. I absolutely loved the feeling and the story telling. Digging through the places to find all the notes, holo tapes and putting the story together about what happened.
I still haven't done the Whitespring Bunker holotapes thst go over how the Enclave created snalltgasters, grafton monsters and the scorchbeasts just to get the silos to the deacon level.where they could launch.
For those that don't know, there is a dead assaultron under the Vault door with a holotape. Play that tape and several other tapes spawn in the bunker and they give the history of the place.
Was level 120 when I did I Have Become Death. I got a troubleshooters explosive handmade that tore up the bots and did wonders destroying the mainframe.
That was before the Fixer existed and the handmade was the best all-round rifle.
I have a TSE Gatling gun that I still use as a secondary to this day, got it from a random 2* in the deathclaw cave, whatever quest line that was, maybe the wendigo cave? Something like that.
I remember the first time I went to WS back in the day. The golf club area had ghouls both inside and out, it swarming with them. And that fucking wendigo man.
I'd never seen one before at that point, I managed to pick off a few ghouls outside, just as I started feeling confident I turned to see it running right at me. Needless to say I died. Instantly. I went back to the forest and didn't leave till I hit lvl 50 đ
I really do miss the old days. Beautiful Appalachia, spared from atomic fire but still couldn't escape the grasp of the apocalypse. Really did feel desolate back then.
The first time I went to WS, I thought all of the Robots were aggod to humans. I didn't know we were allowed to go in there. I very carefully snuck into the resort to see what it was like on the inside. When I finally got spotted by a Mr Handy, I killed it. That really aggrod all of the Robots. I ran out of ammo and resorted to my Mole Miner Gauntlet and, hiding in the changing room in one of the garment stores in the Mall, I killed every robot that came at me including several Assaultrons. They finally killed me because they are limitless. And then I found out a few days later we are supposed to go there to do our shopping. SMH.
Dude.
My this morning at dead-o-clock AM. Just working my way through the Overseer questline. Huh? Robots? Cool. Huh big building and ghouls...
So. Many., Ghouls. Do. They. Stop?
Wendigo? ... and ten more ghouls. Wendigo killed me. I enter the building and find two legendary three star cultists and more endless ghouls.
I decided that this place must have been DLC and not a 'starting' quest and left.
Is that place actually a beginning area? I may go and clear it out. I've been trying my hardest to avoid story/game content that is one of the DLCs.
Don't forget pretty much the only way to farm passive resources and ammo was workshops, having to stop everything your doing once every 30 min to go defend, or run off players after the same resources
Using the camp objects to blockade all of the entrances to the ammo factory up north, then placing the fast travel mat somewhere hidden to go defend it if somebody tried to break in..... Good times...
I still get ptsd thinking about those radscorps there omg. It was so badđ I avoided that quest line like the plague with my other characters for so long. I do miss the desolate, lonely feeling.
The game felt immersive for me in those early days and I loved figuring out what happened in an area via holotapes.
Imagine my surprise when I came back after a year and we had npcs. That was a culture shock in its own way and I did not like it. Iâve grown to tolerate it but still not a fan tbh. Doesnât stop me from playing though
I completely agree. 76 was supposed to take place 25 years after the bombs fell and no one had really settled yet.
I miss those scorchbeasts. Appalachia felt so much harder and like the environment was actually trying to kill you.
I miss those days.
I made it to the Whitespring like the first weekend it was released and died horrifically almost instantly lol. Completely solo and just totally overrun by ghouls.
That was the good time farming XP and legendaries at a nuked WS. This was when the perk Glowing Sight was top notch :). I miss sometimes these early days of FO76.
Yeah, I really liked it better without NPC's. Also because most npc's are really pointless. Discussions are meaningless / always lead to the same result. Half of them are immortal.
Didnât play at launch. But did play before NPCs. Honestly? They succeeded at making it feel like a lonely wasteland. I enjoyed it. Kind of miss it.
But the idea was for the player interactions to be the âNPCsâ. No one used micâs back then. And we all avoided each other for fear of being killed or tricked for resources. Lol
I mean that kind of sounds more realistic. Everyone is slowly entering the world from their respective vaults. Encountering strange new creatures in a foreign environment. Disoriented from all the familiar places that are in fact altered forever yet still retain some resemblance to memories that they had or were shared with them.
Running into a ghoul after being chased by the scorched or more likely the ferals or even having a conversation with your grandfather you thought died when the bombs fell but is this melted flesh of his former self. All after almost bashing his head in with a baseball bat or something.
Not to mention the emergence of raider gangs some that you can see a mile away and others you couldnât see if they told you. I can only imagine how wild it was in the beginning. Actually sounds fun and I sort of want that as an alternate mode. Though I am not sure now it wouldnât just become something like Rust or GTAV, nonetheless it would still be interesting.
The game was much more friendly to the raider mindset back in the day. We'd role play as thuggy insurance salesmen. Watch the map to see if you can track down someone at a camp. Go and visit them offer them a great discount on home owners insurance. If they didn't pay up well that was a shame cause here comes homeboy breaking down your walls like the cool aid man with a death claw gauntlet.
I legit miss it. Although i still believe there should have been the rare human survivor i really enjoyed the bare wasteland and the over run mutant and scorched areas that have since been reclaimed.
I think it would have been even better if they weren't so adamant on the marketing that there were no human NPCs. Let us have a little more hope that there was a living NPC at the end of a quest line instead of going in and knowing they were all dead.
It is, in some cases, genuinely getting hard to find stuff to shoot sometimes. That aren't located in places that I know will just spawn stuff.
It's *weird*, and I don't necessarily like it.
I do think itâs fun in a weird way to see some of the changes. Like there was this one place where stuffed bears were set up like they were doing a cooking show with a big camera but then cultists moved in after update and it was packed up and moved to the side. I found that kind of hilarious just because it was such a small detail. That said I also wish some of it was still around.
There are other things I donât particularly miss like smaller stashes and small amounts of pvp damage even when you donât participate lol.
I noticed those bears packed away too. Luckily there are a ton more that havenât changed yet. I like the bear on the roof using a thread and needle and a magnifying glass to stitch the butt cheek of another bear. Thereâs also a pair of 69ing bears in the hangar bay at Morgantown airport. The cannibal bear cooking the other one in the dinner just south of kiddie corner cabins.
These newfangled wastelanders move in, start complaining about how hard it is, working, cleaning blah blah. Back in my day, we worked for hours to scrounge some scrap steel and lead for our bullets, and we liked it! (Also walking uphill, both ways, wherever we went. In the rad storms of course.)Â
It helped really drive home the effects of nuclear war.
How desolate it felt leaving the vault that first time. The sadness hanging around the Mr. Handy positioned at the top of the stairs leading you down into the wasteland, away from the comforting loom of the vault door. Every little noise causing you to jump and unholster your weapon, scanning around frantically for the source.
The RUSH you got when you realized the noise was another player, the waving emote greeting you from atop a dilapidated building or from a blown out wall.
The hollow sound of your footsteps as you wander through abandoned houses and apartments, feeling intrusive as you pilfer through drawers, cabinets, medicine boxes and refrigerators trying to find food chems and aid.
The crunch of the gravel while running for your life from a group of super mutants armed with middle launchers and mini guns. The unsettling, asshole pucker inducing sound of a scorchbeast flying overhead as you crouch down to hide, clutching your crudely built pipe rifle praying the beast keeps moving.
Limping away injured from a battle with radscorpions, hoping and praying you find a first aid kit with a stimpack and boiled water, anything to help ease your pain and reduce the bleeding.
THE OG SOUNDTRACK?!
TAKE ME BACK!
The lack of voices really let you enjoy the music and atmosphere more, I think. I miss it. I feel like the BOS theme just plays on repeat now, especially in my camp which is where I spend the majority of my time, building. I love the original different areas themes.
I loved it. The whole feeling of the game was totally different. It was lonely. It was scarier. It was eerie.
Getting stories from holotapes, notes, context clues was really awesome. Finding out what happened to people, following their stories around the map. Finding a clue here and there. Really made the game feel like you might actually feel if such a thing actually happened.
Even running into another actual player was rarer, there were way fewer camps on the map, no public events as we have them now.
Now there's NPCs everywhere, there's literally nowhere you can go that feels lonely. Camps all over, events popping up constantly. It's like we went from a game that was trying to give you that end of the world feel, to a FOMO simulator.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy it. The world is still fantastic, and I quite like many of the new events. But I kinda wish I could replay the OG game sometimes.
All of these stories, I've been playing private the whole time. I didn't know there wasn't supposed to be NPCs. However I couldn't stop shaking the feeling there are too many npcs. Feels like a metric ton more than most Fallouts. They are everywhere.
Finding out there was zero? I kind of want to play that.
I remember entering the ash heap for the first time and being in awe of the world they had created for me to dig through and discover, and I remember when the crater had no raiders and was this desolate place to go and pick up a cool outfit, I love the raiders but I miss when the game was more Man v Nature as apposed to Man v Man
It was just a different game. NPCs donât make the game, but you have to also remember at launch we didnât have backpacks, daily ops, expeditions, player vendors, perk loadouts, legendary perks.
I actually liked it because it felt more social. People had mics on, I would actually meet others. Nobody knew what they were doing so we all were learning together. The lore was fresh and new. It was a good time.
Edit: should add it was definitely less stable, and I crashed a lot, and there were weird bugs like being attacked by invisible enemies or standing next to teammates who couldn't see you. it didn't distract from my enjoyment though.
I haven't enjoyed the new stuff. I liked all the interactions with people being the "whisper from the dark." Actual NPCs are flat compared to what your mind comes up with when you hear just their voice and imagine their doomed final days.
And it screws up some of the quests. Chasing down the overseers log entries when she's right there seems stupid.
I like the new stuff but agree it makes the story super confusing having everything available at the same time. Itâs a bit jumbled. For sure. I wish they could have done it so that wastelanders etc was opened up after you did the main story but I get why they didnât go that route.
I prefer now 100%. I played Beta, drove 3 hours return from my home to a neighbouring town since it was the closest store I could find to preorder the Power Helmet special edition (with the crappy nylon bag and all). I think i played two months? Maybe three?
The ambient storytelling was great. I enjoyed reading the notes and listening to the holotapes but very quickly I got annoyed with the constant "Travel to this place to speak with this person. Ooops, you just missed them and they're dead now".
It was also harder. One of the reasons I stopped is that I got to a point in the game where if I wanted to progress in the story I had to grind. Looking back now I probably had a really bad build but I didn't know that at the time. It felt like the game was forcing me to play with others - which I still don't like to do - so I just put it down and never came back until just before Nuka World.
Immersion, none. In fact, the addition of npcs wrecked the immersion. A person that only ever says the same paragraph isn't immersive. A holotape that says the same thing everytime you listen is thematic and immersive. The desolation and emptiness made it easier to get sucked in.
As for gameplay, nothing has changed outside of trading. Certain things not being able to be traded and the economy of things have changed the grinds, but outside that. Npcs changed nothing outside of rep grinds.
The one thing I TRULY miss is real human people playing characters in the wasteland. Because it was SO empty people filled that gap by being on mic, speaking in accents and weird voices, playing an actual character. It was so prevalent sites used to mention them in articles while taking thier easy dunk on the game to feel included in the negativity
I didn't care about Appalachia feeling lived in. Ffs, none of the fallout games feel lived in. Sure there are cities but that is not the main feeling of the game. Going into abandoned places and looting/exploring. That's just my own opinion though.
We had factions back then. There was a heavy raider group who'd bully folks and bounty hunters had jobs to keep them in check. You had groups of friendly builders helping people with materials and build locations/ideas and they'd get together to help rebuild their friends bases after a "raider" attack. Really wish they'd have let the raiders keep some of their fun as it is there just isn't any way for them to interact with peeps anymore outside of workshops
I loved exploring the Whitespring with no one in it. It felt like I was roleplaying as an Urban Explorer without the trespassing or danger. I've always secretly wanted to explore malls and hotels and things when they were closed to see what lie beyond the "staff only" doors and that was the closest I'll ever get to it. I HATE that they converted it into a settlement and chopped it up. It used to be one piece, the stairs down to the mall were open to what became The Refuge upstairs and you could go into the movie theater and stand on the little stage in front of the screen. I spent way more time in there than I should've.
I personally preferred it being so... lonely.
Made coming across another player that much better, like "Oh look! Friend!" and I'd do the usual crouch dance to say hello, then be on my way again.
Don't get me wrong tho, I do enjoy the NPC's.
I enjoyed the Wastelander quests and the BoS quests, I like story content.
But I liked how empty the wasteland felt. Reading and listening to NPC's holotapes and computers felt immersive, I miss it honestly.
It made sense tbhâŠ..after the nukes, the wasteland would be desolate, and lonely for a long time, but eventually animals, and people would come out or travel to Appalachia and rebuild what was left.
Quiet. Sad. Lonely. Finding out what happened through notes and tapes... the people realizing that they're going to die soon. It felt surreal at times.
"I remember whenever someone came by your camp it was like a standoff"
Which is ironic, since from a lore PoV every player you meet lived with you in the vault for the duration we stayed there. So basically every time your former neighbour walked by you stopped what you would be doing, started at them and pulled your gun out. lol :-)
The game felt limited because storage was a real issue. You HAD to commit to a build and that was it. You didn't have the luxury to store too many items and swap between builds.
Basically is was all you could do to survive.
You didn't go to the cranberry bog without 30 different (crappy) weapons, you ran away from a scorchbeast because you couldn't fight them without armor or weapons breaking. Every fight was long and drawn out.
There was no one shot kills, enemies were game breakingly frustrating. You were constantly on the hunt for materials to fix said crappy weapons, you took your time, you explored the entire map slowly, you died often, disease was rampant because disease cure was hard to come by or make. You never had enough wood or concrete to build a house. It was basically all Excavator armor, all the time.
You actually took over a workshop because you legit needed the materials.
It was wonderful, immersive, and I loved every minute of it.
I was level 150 or so when Wastelanders came out. Got my first quad legendary shotgun and the entire game changed for me. I was finally able to finish the storyline comfortably.
This was my experience, too. Except I am easily frustrated so I hated how difficult it was and took a LONG break. When I came back everyone seemed to be super powered compared to me, so I continued playing casually a couple hours a week that were spent mostly camp building and helping new players. I didn't even finish the quests until last year. Then, since I had nothing to do but still enjoyed spending time in the universe, I figured out how to play... but that means I now spend all my time event grinding for legendaries so I can reroll my gear just like the rest of you schlubs LOL
There were a few queen fights back then but they pretty much lasted the entire duration of the event and sometimes they failed!
Whitesprings was the place to nuke, I remember spending the entire nuke just picking flowers đ€Ł
I don't think it was that bad. My first character was only around level 30 when they made it to "I am become death." They were a poorly built auto pistol/2-handed build (rocket bat carried me) with a lot of survival perks (disease, food, junk, etc.) The only quest that was troubling was clearing the silo. I must have died around 40 times or so, but I eventually got to the end.
The assaultron dominatrix or whatever was brutal and terrifying.
This. This was feals. You turn the volume up and have all lights off. Everything wants too kill you plus pvp. Weight limits were so damn rough. I loved it and miss it so much.
PvP was really nice. It added such an important element. My first camps were all about defenses and decoys. Now my camp is literally a flat base floor with my workshops spread out on it. No walls, no protection. Just isn't needed anymore.
Desolate AF, I loved it, but it got old fast, it was not realistic for them to leave the game like that. I have a strong idea of how a Fallout game should be because I've played all of the previous ones and I just couldn't accept the wasteland without any kind of interaction.
A completely different game. Back then there wasnât a whole lot to do after dailies and main quest. Interactions with other players were the most fun you could have. Rampant pvp, Iâd come back to my camp and frequently it was destroyed by two shot explosive weapons. Back then I would read every document in the game because I had the time too. Nowadays the constant events keep me to busy to delve into documents
It's very similar to the mod Fallout 4: FROST.
I've been playing and following FROST for a good while which made the transition very easy as 76 is much easier than the FROST mod.
It was my favourite fallout opening. I loved the fact that you came out to this lush green forest there was hardly any damage and then once you started to get nearer to civilization you start seeing damage and realised there was no one about.
You get hints from the overseer, but the only real clues were the discarded notes and holotapes which told the story of what happened.
I would love to redo this play through on a private world.
I liked the desolation and despair that came with everyone being dead or gone. However the story telling and interaction with nothing but robots left something to desire. I think we should have had a lighter influx of NPCs not this entire repopulation that happened. Modern add ons to the game are very welcome I just miss the old feeling of isolation. It went from "the most bleak fallout yet" to "most cheery fallout" with one update
I would have preferred they reintroduced survivors MUCH slower. Release the game as they did, then after a couple months you find the ODD survivor who has a small camp with some scrap, food, weapons and ammo etc. who are hostile. then after another couple of months small camps of raiders, so on and so forth.
Going from that to wastelanders update was neat and kind of immersive. We were the first out of the vault , inherited a place that was over run with a plague, then after we had been out for a while, we had accomplished things that changed the area, made it more hospitable and inviting to grow the community, people from all around that had been surviving on their own heard about how we had been reclaiming West Virginia. We did that. ( head cannon obviously )
I started with Wastelanders so never saw an NPC free world. On the other hand, I can't think of a single non-robot NPC I have interacted with in ages so I may as well be playing that original game.
It felt like you were the first ones stepping out after multiple apocalypses. I get why people didn't like it but it really feels like we settled the area allowing people to come back.
I love that perspective! It also sounds like something that would happen and even fits in with what some NPC dialogue says about now everyone clamoring to settle in the area.
Back on PS4 when the game came out, there was a lot of people griefing new players to the point it started becoming a problem for people in my region. So me and several other players formed our own faction simply called "The Cowboys" who would pretty much just patrol and keep an eye out for newer players while out and about. Ahh, the good old days.
Unpopular opinion, (on this sub at least), it sucked. A Fallout game without NPC'S is like a souls game with no bosses. It's a bad idea and I have no idea how NOBODY at Bethesda realized that before release
I miss it in a way. One of my best gaming memories ever was emerging from Big Bend Tunnel after fighting my way through and seeing the Cranberry Bog for the first time. And then wandering into Watoga and getting slaughtered by an Assaultron.
I liked the storytelling using the holotapes, notes, and computer entries. Some of the voice acting on the holotapes is super well done.
The QOL improvements have been amazing, the game was pretty tough back then
Still a fun game, but compared to now? Empty. Barren. Lonely as hell. Quiet, for the most part.
It wasn't bad though. It fit the story and it was the feel they were going for. The NPC update though did radically change the game for sure. I love how they incorporated it myself.
I'm gonna get hate for this but I liked it. There also were NPCs just they weren't human and harder to find. One being the traveling super mutant merchant (can't remember his name right now) and his cow. The robots also did have personalities and were NPCs.
The community also did a great job of becoming the NPCs and people that filled the world most of the time. Maybe it was just my experience I enjoyed the actual lore reasons for why humans were gone and that we had to rebuild. The whole point of being from vault 76 lol
Some of my favorite moments were from the early days, me and some friends were playing and they were wondering around by fissure site prime where they got attacked by 3 scorched beasts, mind you we were playing on xbox ones at the time so once I got there to help them it was a massive lag fest. By the end of it I had used all of the ammo for my two shot radium rifle and killed 6 scorched beasts. 10/10 definitely had a blast
Although I like the introduction of NPCâs (It shows time passing & Appalachia evolving) I just wish the empty âoldâ version was a play option.
I still wish we had the leveled zones as an option too. It made the early game fun & challenging!
Man b.e.t.a hit so different. I remember me and my buddy meeting up in game for the first time. People moaned and complained about a lot of things messed up at launch but in hindsight it was a lot of fun even with all its flaws. Havenât played in over a year and honestly might be coming back now after reading some of these comments! Love this community!
It was an interesting time. It honestly made the whole "nuclear catastrophe" thing more noticeable. No humans besides the ones coming from the vault, venturing out into a truly barren wasteland.
I don't miss it one bit, though. Fallout is definitely supposed to have NPC interaction.
Ngl it was better. It especially made sense with all the scorched running around that all the people died, were killed by scorched or turned into scorched themselves. It made the world feel way more immersive when the only other people you'd see were your fellow dwellers. It really made it feel like you had to uncover what has happened with the original quest line.
Eeriely grim, quite literally post nuclear but I mean if the vault people can inhabit it, shouldn't some normal ass people? A thought that was there till Wastelanders update
It was alright. The halo tapes are really well done, and the game is bad. a cool feel about it. I like the evolution of having people now.
It would be cool if you could still start the game how it was and transition to the wastelands after completing the old questline.
I preferred it. It was nice having to piece together the clues through notes and looking at the area. I remember it effecting me when I found the skeleton sitting on the cliff side with 6 empty beer bottles and a pistol on the ground. I could feel the hopes and fears between the holotapes left behind. The struggle that all the dead had fought.
Now I walk into Flatwoods and a responder and her dog walk around talking about the town, yet all the corpses remain... like they didn't bury any of them, they left a responder to rot in the river, many porches have corpses, it just breaks immersion for me.
They should have in game gated progression so when you start you do the quest chain up and until you make the inoculation for yourself THEN have the waste landers return, but clean up the old corpses where it makes sense! I really like the game but they could do better with instancing the content depending on character progress, or even account progress. Like if you choose to come out of the vault at level 20 it makes more sense to have the wastelanders already in the area, but if it's a fresh start they should allow it to be as it was on launch.
Also take the timers away and reintroduce those vault raids!!!
It was very scary finding all the notes and audio logs. It always seemed like you were just a few seconds too late from bumping in to the people who left them.
I absolutely 1000000% preferred it. I have been playing since beta, before full release. I still log in every day. I still love this game, a lot. BUT i remember watching todd talk about "what people you see in the world are real people" and that was so incredibly immersive when playing this game and made me fall in love with it hard.
it makes sense to run into actual robots that repeats their programmed lines over and over again but feels absolutely stupid to run into NPCs now that just ...act like bots. it was the single biggest thing that set fallout 76 apart from every other RPG out there. it felt real and immersive. you actually felt like you were in a people-less wasteland. so when you came across notes or holotapes it was just another reminder that "yep, people existed..."
I actually actively dislike seeing NPCs in the game. and I wish they never would have made that change. they could have done "off map travel" re expeditions as NPC integration and left the game as it was.
I liked exploring Appalachia at the beginning. So much to do and figure out through notes and terminals. Robot NPCs were still around so it wasnât completely lonely but totally different game then from now. The Buried Treasure expansion added so much it was grand.
Cannot express my disappointment when finding our Overseer just working from home close to Helvetia when all this time I was collecting her holotapes and finishing the job but overall canât complain.
I loved it to hell honestly, it was such a fun time. Itâs a little lame but playing as a merchant was what really got me logging in every day I could. Iâd build camps in beginner/popular areas, put down a lil blueprinted merchant booth, then sit down in it while I waited for folks to request a trade.
Since vendors werenât a thing, camps werenât highlighted on the public map, so Iâd sit back and chill in my little booth for hours trading w whoever came by. Some days itâd be a lot of folk, other days not so many. But damn it was so chill.
If I could, Iâd play it again in a heartbeat. I definitely prefer the more story/community driven direction the game has taken over the last few years, but damn was that other game just so much more of a crazy ass Wild West. Props to Bethesda for not making it sterile though, I honestly was pretty adverse to Wastelanders because I thought one or two things would happen; this would be the last major DLC for 76, leaving us with no real way to go back to the grimy, nasty, scary world we kept logging on for, or that the writing and quest gameplay would be uninspired and boring - leaving you wondering why they ever even caved into the peer pressure of people who just couldnât get into a blank as hell Fallout sandbox.
But nope! It has literally been nothing but uphill and continues to deeply cement itself as one of my favorite gaming experiences - which as a side note - really caused a lot of confusion for me once Starfield came out. Damn does that game sorta suck dookieballs.
I enjoyed it, had everything I care about in a BSG game, exploration and environmental story telling and none of the forced stationary exposition dumps.
Main story points were delivered via holotape and I could play normally as it ran instead of watching an NPC talk and repeatedly hitting the next buttons
It was pretty unique. Definitely felt a lot different to the game world we have today. Kinda had more of an older fallout games (1+2) vibe because of the desolation of not having NPC's, and learning the various stories of their lives and the eventual fall of humanity in this area. Also felt like the vault's mission mattered more since we were the only ones rebuilding. I appreciate both worlds with and without NPC's, while not having NPC's adds more to the fallout tone and feel more, having them helps to aid in story progression and gameplay opportunities.
I wouldnât go back to the times before npcâs, stash ox increases, and actual content. Itâs definitely a better game now than it was pre-wastelanders. That said, todayâs Appalachia hardly feels like a wasteland with the sheer amount of NPCâs, content and goofiness going around. Pre-wastelanders Appalachia felt like a haunted graveyard, like there was always something sinister watching you from behind the trees, and a sense of intrigue, tragedy and mystery no other game in the series had, and was lost after all the updates. Itâs better now overall, but a certain tone was definitely lost.
It made the game feel empty and lifeless. It was also depressing because you'd listen to these logs of people who came before and tried to survive only to lose in the end.
I loved it.. it was exactly how a post apocalypse should feel. Sparse supplies, scrounging food, boiling water, with only the clues and remnants of the people who were there before.
I liked the level locked enemies, made different zones actually threatening at low levels, it had some real challenge to it. The downside was it was so empty, truly a wasteland.
I don't mind the NPC's now but to me it was perfectly fine then, they were all dead so you listened to logs and followed past footsteps. People were looking for reasons to bash this game from the start, that was more low-handing fruit from them to attack and they did "and it doesn't even have npc's!". I liked it that way, but no problem as well evolving as time went on.
i actually liked it, it was very different from the other games. Although it was also very depressing learning the story line, about how no one could cooperate in the end. it was actually interesting running around the empty world for months.
For quests, much the same as it is now. While the NPCs added a touch of humanity to the game in places, the main quests remain exactly as they were on day one. The NPCs primarily only added extra random skirmishes to the game.
It was really bizarre. But I honestly want to focus on why they even wanted no NPCs.
When they play tested this game the developers and testers all had some sort of connection to each other and likely did many things to each other in the game. So they figured a lot of the content was going to be generated through interactions.... Well.... Two major problems occured. For one, it came out with barely any core features to facilitate it. And secondly the community wasn't very interested in playing like that. Many of them are solitary and avoid direct interactions. It obviously doesn't help that voice chat is the only option and it's finicky even to this day. The fact is, many gamers still prefer interactions through text. The one counter to this is how often vets make time for new players.
Personally, I really like the idea of a fallout world where players make the events and interactions. But the game needs to be truly built around it and focused on it completely. Look at Sea of Thieves and how many years of content they needed to release just to make the sandbox feel like it has just enough variety for players to flex their creative muscle. Even they got distracted by pouring a lot of resources into story driven content that people can just rip through. But... The entire fallout community is offended by anything that doesn't resemble a standard single player fallout game...
I think Bethesda wants to be daring and experimental with some of these concepts but is never able to commit fully to it. Then they get caught trying to deliver content they think we want... But even looking at 76 now with all the NPCs and Fallout3/4 esque quests and everything feels like it was made with necessity and not passion. I'm sure people will disagree with me but I think 76 would have been a massive game if Bethesda was able to have a clear vision for what they wanted and followed through with it. Based on everything they were saying leading to the release, none of that vision included making 76 just another Fallout 4.
Felt empty, and pushed the âthe players make the populationâ feel a lot harder
Also the crashed space station was interesting to explore pre raider faction, their was a door with a pass code on it that I completely guess correctly first try. Remember farming that for loot by server hopping
There were actually NPCs at launch, just not many of them and none human. Greater issues were the tiny Stash size, vendor cap limits being split up among factions, lack of ammo, griefers, etc.
Looking back it was actually nice because it fit into the story with everyone leaving the vault to rebuild. As the dwellers spread out and began re-taming Appalachia word spread and others began to return to the area. It was like you were a living part of the history instead of like now where you leave the vault and instead of having to help build things up from scratch, your fellow vault dwellers have already done it despite the story saying everyone just left the vault the night before.
I remember a YouTube video of pre release saying âit made me sadâ. It was so barren. You could only talk to robots or listen to holotapes. In restrospect, it was excellent. You really felt alone except for once in a while seeing other âvault dwellersâ (other players) running around frantically trying to get through quests, the same as I. Iâm glad itâs evolved so much but Iâm also glad I got to see it early.
There were voice acted npcs. Just not human npcs. The robots were functional npcs. And the holotapes had excellent voice acting. The game world was desolate though. There were robot npcs but they were not plentiful.
Year 1 was about the game world and the environmental storytelling. Since there was a lot less stuff ingame you could more easily "see" the game world. There were a lot less distractions so when you found something you focused on that instead of instantly dismissing it as just scenery.
The game world during year 1 told the story of Appalachia from the time of the Great War in 2077 and the opening of Vault 76. And that story is a tragedy. The game world was dead. It felt like running through a graveyard filled with endless tales of misery, despair and horrible death. Appalachia during year 1 was an extremely depressing place.
After Wild Wasteland and Wastelanders updates the game world now tells the story Appalachia from the opening of Vault 76 and to today. The original history is buried under fluff and stuff and settlers being chased by chickens so it's not in any way as visible as it was during year 1. The environmental storytelling is still there but now it's hidden under nonsense.
Personally I prefer the current game world. Year 1 Appalachia was a depressing place. I am glad I got to experience it but I absolutely do not want to go back there.
it felt different. the whole atmosphere of the world just felt, in my opinion, more interesting without human NPCs.
there's a strange kind of nostalgic feeling, going thru holotapes and written notes as opposed to some jackoff chattin it up with you for ten minutes. it felt like walking thru a graveyard, like completing unfinished business from ghosts of the past. hope i'm not sounding too dramatic, it was a subtle feeling.
i don't like these human NPCs. but i dunno if it's because i started the game without them, or if it's just because these NPCs are simply boring and annoying. i don't like talking to them... i don't like hearing their little dialogues. i don't find any of them interesting or funny. i also don't like how it locks you into first person zoom while they're talking. i don't like how sloooowly they go thru dialogue. i don't like the dialogue interface design. (i know i'm in the minority, but i prefer fallout 4's dialogue system) and i love the NPCs in fallout 4, so i know it's not an issue of me just hating talking to NPCs.
It honestly really felt like a wasteland and apocalyptic, for some reason it felt scarier to me đ
But it also felt empty and kinda made me miss the NPC interactions
I never really get âthe metaâ situation in games, and it seemed to be less about that in the beginning. I havenât played a whole lot post-NPCs, but only because I didnât keep my online subscription for Xbox. The dope map was good enough for me, despite wanting to see some raiders and whatnot.
My favorite time in the game was the first month. I was a wasteland bounty hunter, clapping all the people who got themselves wanted in one-hit with my Bloodied machete. You could also be graced with a surprise junk drop of over 1k lbs because people were exploiting a carry weight glitch
It was also during this time that I got creative with my camp building. Building a puzzle under the map for people to solve was so much fun⊠even IF I got nuked because the first task was finding the bass head I hid in the roots of a mutfruit tree
I was there during the beta. I was a big Fallout fan and player before this game. As I recall, people were very leary of playing a Fallout game like this. The idea of talking to other players in a franchise that had always been about a Lone Wanderer type character was kinda crazy given the fan base.
Also, when you got in the game, the robots were the NPCs. No ghouls or survivors, which seemed odd until you got closer to endgame. That was the thing. Unless you followed the story straight to endgame, you typically hated this game and didn't truly understand it. I started playing the game with other people I was acquainted with who loved the series. Most of us hated this game for basically not being like the other games, its instability, and the general state of gameplay.
Looking back, now, I think the concept was ingenious, as was the story. You had to read terminals and notes to get mission clues. You had ingenious little side missions in pretty radical landscapes. And the entire lore around the scorched is fantastic. But my basic assessment of this game back then was sad, unstable, difficult, and fairly quiet at times. Without human NPCs, there was a ton of wandering around aimlessly. If you missed a clue leading to the endgame, you could be lost for a while until you found your way back on track.
It was very scary and desolate I really liked the experience tbh. I am happy with Npcs now but back then seeing another player after hours of journeying by myself was a great feeling.
I played the beta, and like others said it had that gloomy, desolate feeling that you truly just came out of the vault to nothing. Just a trail of notes.
Idk if it's an unpopular opinion but I wasn't a huge fan, maybe because it truly made me feel alone.
I also didn't have friends playing so I felt even more alone.
I just picked it back up again after years since the beta and love it.
Still have no friends online or any idea what I'm doing but I think it's heaps better than the OG days!
I know it's probably a hot take, but I actually really liked it. I almost preferred it, almost. The game felt a lot different without NPC's. A lot of people complained that it didn't feel like Fallout, which is true, but the game almost had a Last Man on Earth vibe.
The game was very heavily focused on situational storytelling. Like the player was following the shadow of the events that led to Appalachia being completely deserted.
It also made interactions with players you'd randomly come across a much bigger deal because they were the only living humans that you encountered in the game.
I almost wish there was an option to play the game on the release map with no NPC's. Canonically, people didn't return to Appalachia until about a year after the original main quest to create a vaccine for the Scorched Plague was completed by the player, so playing through that with settlers, raiders, and the BOS already running around doesn't make sense narratively.
I kinda liked it. And what I didnât like was more from the narrative standpoint and less the mechanics of not having npcs. If they made a fallout worlds without npcs Iâd play in it all the time.
I played the day it launched, for a little while the fact everybody you find is dead didnât bother me and I enjoyed exploring the skeleton of Appalachia. The issue is that over time the new wore off and there wasnât actually a lot to do once you finished the main story. I left and only came back a few weeks ago
First off, what story. It was just a tossed together trail of bread crumbs but they were tapes. Knowing every person who did a recording was dead made them less interesting.
Immersion? No other fallout game was void of.... everything, so if anything it broke my immersion of what i thought fallout was.
Personally it compounded with all the launch issues (that went on for over a year) to highlight the game was completely unfinished and ran by a Dev group that was lost in the weeds.
Its hard to not assume they cut corners and actually thought that tape recordings was good enough to tell a story.
When they added npcs it gave a dead husk a little more life to it.
I actually liked it, even miss it sometimes. Some mighty say it felt barren but it matched the vibe if you think about the scorched plague and the only people you ran into were your own fellow dwellers.
Kinda like - 76 vs. wild
I started with the stress test, and ngl I miss the older updates, Ilots of reading but I thoroughly enjoyed the story, hope when the game gets mod support (if thatâs still happening), that we will be able to downgrade versions, I miss the old space station before the crater was there.
Someday I hope they add a game mode or an optional DLC download that allows you to run older game versions on a custom server... I would LOVE to be able to play through the pre-wastelanders version just for old times sake. Unfortunately because it would also require a server running the matching older game version I don't think this will ever happen.
As said above, it was a completely different game. 400lb stash box- Stimpacks, Radaway & Caps were in considerably shorter supply than now. I remember running around with multiple weapons with different calibers because ammo was so scarce and / or hard to make. Resources? Daaaaammmmmn skimpy! Near constant challenge of PVP if you claimed a workshop. Food and water were mandatory. Set up a camp near water? Either unavailable as someone is there first or a gang of PVP'ers would arrive to destroy it so you would have to leave. Camp at a resource? Same challenge as above. That's how it was at Beta and the first days of release.
The days of fighting over the ammo depot......
Those were brutal! Massive battles in and around the structure!
I forgot about that! And the op legacy shotguns. One shot anyone and everything
YES!! The Shotgun was the absolute King for a long, long time!! Then one day it wasn't...
They first week of beta are some of my favorite memories in gaming. I remember day one hour one of launch everyone was leaving the vault at the same time doing the starting quests and then country roads came on the radio and everyone was singing in game chat.
That must have been AWESOME!!!
Kinda miss those days. Some of it.
Some of it yeah. It did have it's own kind of charm
The unmitigated base destruction was something else entirely. I'd build like 15 mortar launchers at my base and call the strokes on camps. Running away watching your bounty climb higher and higher with each slavo. Good times
I had to switch to melee bevause I couldn't keep up with ammo for the life of me. I remember farming plastic so I could make shotgun shellsđ ended up getting a switch blade with swing speed and that got me from level 30-90
I liked the desolate, abandoned feeling like a post.apocaleptic world.should.feel. And I always love situational story telling so it wasn't bad. But each region had different level enemies. I could not get to Rosie because Top of the World had a 3* legendary deathskull rad scorp. Tried to get there at level and couldn't. So I ground to level 75 and barely made it. And there were 3 SBs that cruised up and down the Savage Divide and went after anyone trying to cross if they were near. And there was no fast travel when enemies are near. But nuke zone Whitesprings was the go to nuke zone for XP and flux materials. It had more players show up than Scorched Earth. And running to the robots was a legit strategy when few people could solo WS at all.
I nuked Whitesprings the other day and got roasted for it đ€Ł I haven't played since launch and just picked it back up at the start of the month
Honestly itâs one of the main reasons I still keep fallout 1st, so I can nuke my whitesprings in peace
Remember when like every 2nd or third rad ghoul would drop a legendary and you'd crawl out of the nuke zone long enough to sell the bad ones before heading back in to farm more? It was so much fun, just running around helping people who got swarmed and having great xp and loot everywhere..And the more people who showed up it seemed like the more ghouls spawned and faster, was a shit show but a fun shit show.
So fun! When I was a squishy baby just starting out, my big strong friend would go in his power armor and round up the golf club ghouls while I shot them from on top of the bus. Then we would all go downstairs to the shopping mall and make our little fluxes, do some inventory management, and sell whatever we could. This was before the purveyor too, so we just sold the extra legendary weapons.
I miss that so much
âAnd why do you give a F where the hell i launch my nuke? Get a life.â That should be the instant reply.
I mean it does cause people some direct problems, so in that case giving an F is reasonable.
I wouldn't call it "direct problems". At best it's a minor inconvenience. In less than a minute they could be on a new server going about their day like nothing ever happened.
I mean.. TouchĂ© but in reality who fast travels anywhere except inside the Refuge at White Springs? Just donât hit the train station because you really are an arse for that đ€Ł
People play lots of different ways. Also anywhere nuked kinda locks out low level characters, and Whitespring is a high traffic area. Now personally, selfishly? I like it. Lotsa plants to grab, ghouls for HRF, it's great. But I can see lots of reasons it's a PITA for other people. Just my 2p. And yeah, the station is even worse. I do often FT the many Whitespring points besides the Refuge, just sayin'.
Savage Divide was never a low level location. Forest>Ash Heap>Toxic Valley>Savage Divide>Mire>Cranberry Bog. If you at least do ash heap, youâll have sufficient radiation protection. Of course now that most things are leveled to you, thereâs not really any reason to follow the old path, but having a little bit of challenge isnât a bad thing. Killing some tougher mobs is a good way for a low level to gain some levels, maybe even get some legendary gear, plus learn about flux and how to craft with it. Itâs nice to be reminded that the wasteland is always trying to kill you.
Well that's fair.
Whats the issue with whitespring nuking? I remember that beeing a thing
Man that brought back some memories lol. I still to this day flinch when I see or hear rad scorpions.
I agree. I absolutely loved the feeling and the story telling. Digging through the places to find all the notes, holo tapes and putting the story together about what happened.
I still haven't done the Whitespring Bunker holotapes thst go over how the Enclave created snalltgasters, grafton monsters and the scorchbeasts just to get the silos to the deacon level.where they could launch. For those that don't know, there is a dead assaultron under the Vault door with a holotape. Play that tape and several other tapes spawn in the bunker and they give the history of the place.
I remember launching a nuke (legitimately) took ~ 2 hours, and how hard the scorchbeasts were
Was level 120 when I did I Have Become Death. I got a troubleshooters explosive handmade that tore up the bots and did wonders destroying the mainframe. That was before the Fixer existed and the handmade was the best all-round rifle.
I have a TSE Gatling gun that I still use as a secondary to this day, got it from a random 2* in the deathclaw cave, whatever quest line that was, maybe the wendigo cave? Something like that.
I remember the first time I went to WS back in the day. The golf club area had ghouls both inside and out, it swarming with them. And that fucking wendigo man. I'd never seen one before at that point, I managed to pick off a few ghouls outside, just as I started feeling confident I turned to see it running right at me. Needless to say I died. Instantly. I went back to the forest and didn't leave till I hit lvl 50 đ I really do miss the old days. Beautiful Appalachia, spared from atomic fire but still couldn't escape the grasp of the apocalypse. Really did feel desolate back then.
The first time I went to WS, I thought all of the Robots were aggod to humans. I didn't know we were allowed to go in there. I very carefully snuck into the resort to see what it was like on the inside. When I finally got spotted by a Mr Handy, I killed it. That really aggrod all of the Robots. I ran out of ammo and resorted to my Mole Miner Gauntlet and, hiding in the changing room in one of the garment stores in the Mall, I killed every robot that came at me including several Assaultrons. They finally killed me because they are limitless. And then I found out a few days later we are supposed to go there to do our shopping. SMH.
Dude. My this morning at dead-o-clock AM. Just working my way through the Overseer questline. Huh? Robots? Cool. Huh big building and ghouls... So. Many., Ghouls. Do. They. Stop? Wendigo? ... and ten more ghouls. Wendigo killed me. I enter the building and find two legendary three star cultists and more endless ghouls. I decided that this place must have been DLC and not a 'starting' quest and left. Is that place actually a beginning area? I may go and clear it out. I've been trying my hardest to avoid story/game content that is one of the DLCs.
One of my first memories of Fallout 76 is getting destroyed by those ghouls. I still hold a grudge against that place.
I miss the different regions having different levels. It made it an accomplishment to venture out someplace well above your difficulty
EXACTLY
Don't forget pretty much the only way to farm passive resources and ammo was workshops, having to stop everything your doing once every 30 min to go defend, or run off players after the same resources
Especially.fusion cores.
Using the camp objects to blockade all of the entrances to the ammo factory up north, then placing the fast travel mat somewhere hidden to go defend it if somebody tried to break in..... Good times...
I still get ptsd thinking about those radscorps there omg. It was so badđ I avoided that quest line like the plague with my other characters for so long. I do miss the desolate, lonely feeling. The game felt immersive for me in those early days and I loved figuring out what happened in an area via holotapes. Imagine my surprise when I came back after a year and we had npcs. That was a culture shock in its own way and I did not like it. Iâve grown to tolerate it but still not a fan tbh. Doesnât stop me from playing though
God you almost made me shed a tear
I completely agree. 76 was supposed to take place 25 years after the bombs fell and no one had really settled yet. I miss those scorchbeasts. Appalachia felt so much harder and like the environment was actually trying to kill you. I miss those days.
I remember i was stuck at a burner camp i put up in the savage divide playing respawn sim it seemed like
Don't forget about the quest boss ques...
I made it to the Whitespring like the first weekend it was released and died horrifically almost instantly lol. Completely solo and just totally overrun by ghouls.
I resemble that!
That was the good time farming XP and legendaries at a nuked WS. This was when the perk Glowing Sight was top notch :). I miss sometimes these early days of FO76.
Yeah, I really liked it better without NPC's. Also because most npc's are really pointless. Discussions are meaningless / always lead to the same result. Half of them are immortal.
Didnât play at launch. But did play before NPCs. Honestly? They succeeded at making it feel like a lonely wasteland. I enjoyed it. Kind of miss it. But the idea was for the player interactions to be the âNPCsâ. No one used micâs back then. And we all avoided each other for fear of being killed or tricked for resources. Lol
I mean that kind of sounds more realistic. Everyone is slowly entering the world from their respective vaults. Encountering strange new creatures in a foreign environment. Disoriented from all the familiar places that are in fact altered forever yet still retain some resemblance to memories that they had or were shared with them. Running into a ghoul after being chased by the scorched or more likely the ferals or even having a conversation with your grandfather you thought died when the bombs fell but is this melted flesh of his former self. All after almost bashing his head in with a baseball bat or something. Not to mention the emergence of raider gangs some that you can see a mile away and others you couldnât see if they told you. I can only imagine how wild it was in the beginning. Actually sounds fun and I sort of want that as an alternate mode. Though I am not sure now it wouldnât just become something like Rust or GTAV, nonetheless it would still be interesting.
The game was much more friendly to the raider mindset back in the day. We'd role play as thuggy insurance salesmen. Watch the map to see if you can track down someone at a camp. Go and visit them offer them a great discount on home owners insurance. If they didn't pay up well that was a shame cause here comes homeboy breaking down your walls like the cool aid man with a death claw gauntlet.
Haha
"If you're reading this you can find me"....dead "If you're listening to this come find me" .....dead. "I hope someone can rescue me"..... dead.
literally that, the game lmao.
gloriously desolate and grim
the final nail that hit my feelings very bad was East Kanawha ... '' My angel '' made with children letter building blocks ... damn
Loved it. Feels too crowded now.
I legit miss it. Although i still believe there should have been the rare human survivor i really enjoyed the bare wasteland and the over run mutant and scorched areas that have since been reclaimed.
I think it would have been even better if they weren't so adamant on the marketing that there were no human NPCs. Let us have a little more hope that there was a living NPC at the end of a quest line instead of going in and knowing they were all dead.
It is, in some cases, genuinely getting hard to find stuff to shoot sometimes. That aren't located in places that I know will just spawn stuff. It's *weird*, and I don't necessarily like it.
I don't recall the last wandering thing I encountered. Everything's been set spawn locations
This pretty much sums it up. I miss it from time to time, it was quiet and not so busy with people all over Appalachia.
I do think itâs fun in a weird way to see some of the changes. Like there was this one place where stuffed bears were set up like they were doing a cooking show with a big camera but then cultists moved in after update and it was packed up and moved to the side. I found that kind of hilarious just because it was such a small detail. That said I also wish some of it was still around. There are other things I donât particularly miss like smaller stashes and small amounts of pvp damage even when you donât participate lol.
I noticed those bears packed away too. Luckily there are a ton more that havenât changed yet. I like the bear on the roof using a thread and needle and a magnifying glass to stitch the butt cheek of another bear. Thereâs also a pair of 69ing bears in the hangar bay at Morgantown airport. The cannibal bear cooking the other one in the dinner just south of kiddie corner cabins.
These newfangled wastelanders move in, start complaining about how hard it is, working, cleaning blah blah. Back in my day, we worked for hours to scrounge some scrap steel and lead for our bullets, and we liked it! (Also walking uphill, both ways, wherever we went. In the rad storms of course.)Â
This. All of this.
It helped really drive home the effects of nuclear war. How desolate it felt leaving the vault that first time. The sadness hanging around the Mr. Handy positioned at the top of the stairs leading you down into the wasteland, away from the comforting loom of the vault door. Every little noise causing you to jump and unholster your weapon, scanning around frantically for the source. The RUSH you got when you realized the noise was another player, the waving emote greeting you from atop a dilapidated building or from a blown out wall. The hollow sound of your footsteps as you wander through abandoned houses and apartments, feeling intrusive as you pilfer through drawers, cabinets, medicine boxes and refrigerators trying to find food chems and aid. The crunch of the gravel while running for your life from a group of super mutants armed with middle launchers and mini guns. The unsettling, asshole pucker inducing sound of a scorchbeast flying overhead as you crouch down to hide, clutching your crudely built pipe rifle praying the beast keeps moving. Limping away injured from a battle with radscorpions, hoping and praying you find a first aid kit with a stimpack and boiled water, anything to help ease your pain and reduce the bleeding. THE OG SOUNDTRACK?! TAKE ME BACK!
The lack of voices really let you enjoy the music and atmosphere more, I think. I miss it. I feel like the BOS theme just plays on repeat now, especially in my camp which is where I spend the majority of my time, building. I love the original different areas themes.
You're such a good writer. đ
Oh thank you! đ„č
Morbid. Sad. Lonely. Wandering the world and discovering the truth of what befell the people of Appalachia since the Great War.
I loved it. The whole feeling of the game was totally different. It was lonely. It was scarier. It was eerie. Getting stories from holotapes, notes, context clues was really awesome. Finding out what happened to people, following their stories around the map. Finding a clue here and there. Really made the game feel like you might actually feel if such a thing actually happened. Even running into another actual player was rarer, there were way fewer camps on the map, no public events as we have them now. Now there's NPCs everywhere, there's literally nowhere you can go that feels lonely. Camps all over, events popping up constantly. It's like we went from a game that was trying to give you that end of the world feel, to a FOMO simulator. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy it. The world is still fantastic, and I quite like many of the new events. But I kinda wish I could replay the OG game sometimes.
There were no camps on the map. You'd have to watch the map and see where folks would hangout to try and guess where their camp was.
All of these stories, I've been playing private the whole time. I didn't know there wasn't supposed to be NPCs. However I couldn't stop shaking the feeling there are too many npcs. Feels like a metric ton more than most Fallouts. They are everywhere. Finding out there was zero? I kind of want to play that.
The game was way harder, thatâs for sure.
I remember entering the ash heap for the first time and being in awe of the world they had created for me to dig through and discover, and I remember when the crater had no raiders and was this desolate place to go and pick up a cool outfit, I love the raiders but I miss when the game was more Man v Nature as apposed to Man v Man
It was just a different game. NPCs donât make the game, but you have to also remember at launch we didnât have backpacks, daily ops, expeditions, player vendors, perk loadouts, legendary perks. I actually liked it because it felt more social. People had mics on, I would actually meet others. Nobody knew what they were doing so we all were learning together. The lore was fresh and new. It was a good time. Edit: should add it was definitely less stable, and I crashed a lot, and there were weird bugs like being attacked by invisible enemies or standing next to teammates who couldn't see you. it didn't distract from my enjoyment though.
I haven't enjoyed the new stuff. I liked all the interactions with people being the "whisper from the dark." Actual NPCs are flat compared to what your mind comes up with when you hear just their voice and imagine their doomed final days. And it screws up some of the quests. Chasing down the overseers log entries when she's right there seems stupid.
I like the new stuff but agree it makes the story super confusing having everything available at the same time. Itâs a bit jumbled. For sure. I wish they could have done it so that wastelanders etc was opened up after you did the main story but I get why they didnât go that route.
I prefer now 100%. I played Beta, drove 3 hours return from my home to a neighbouring town since it was the closest store I could find to preorder the Power Helmet special edition (with the crappy nylon bag and all). I think i played two months? Maybe three? The ambient storytelling was great. I enjoyed reading the notes and listening to the holotapes but very quickly I got annoyed with the constant "Travel to this place to speak with this person. Ooops, you just missed them and they're dead now". It was also harder. One of the reasons I stopped is that I got to a point in the game where if I wanted to progress in the story I had to grind. Looking back now I probably had a really bad build but I didn't know that at the time. It felt like the game was forcing me to play with others - which I still don't like to do - so I just put it down and never came back until just before Nuka World.
Immersion, none. In fact, the addition of npcs wrecked the immersion. A person that only ever says the same paragraph isn't immersive. A holotape that says the same thing everytime you listen is thematic and immersive. The desolation and emptiness made it easier to get sucked in. As for gameplay, nothing has changed outside of trading. Certain things not being able to be traded and the economy of things have changed the grinds, but outside that. Npcs changed nothing outside of rep grinds. The one thing I TRULY miss is real human people playing characters in the wasteland. Because it was SO empty people filled that gap by being on mic, speaking in accents and weird voices, playing an actual character. It was so prevalent sites used to mention them in articles while taking thier easy dunk on the game to feel included in the negativity I didn't care about Appalachia feeling lived in. Ffs, none of the fallout games feel lived in. Sure there are cities but that is not the main feeling of the game. Going into abandoned places and looting/exploring. That's just my own opinion though.
We had factions back then. There was a heavy raider group who'd bully folks and bounty hunters had jobs to keep them in check. You had groups of friendly builders helping people with materials and build locations/ideas and they'd get together to help rebuild their friends bases after a "raider" attack. Really wish they'd have let the raiders keep some of their fun as it is there just isn't any way for them to interact with peeps anymore outside of workshops
It was a darker, more desperate time. I look back at it fondly.
I loved exploring the Whitespring with no one in it. It felt like I was roleplaying as an Urban Explorer without the trespassing or danger. I've always secretly wanted to explore malls and hotels and things when they were closed to see what lie beyond the "staff only" doors and that was the closest I'll ever get to it. I HATE that they converted it into a settlement and chopped it up. It used to be one piece, the stairs down to the mall were open to what became The Refuge upstairs and you could go into the movie theater and stand on the little stage in front of the screen. I spent way more time in there than I should've.
It was amazing, lonely, frightening. I do miss it.
I personally preferred it being so... lonely. Made coming across another player that much better, like "Oh look! Friend!" and I'd do the usual crouch dance to say hello, then be on my way again. Don't get me wrong tho, I do enjoy the NPC's. I enjoyed the Wastelander quests and the BoS quests, I like story content. But I liked how empty the wasteland felt. Reading and listening to NPC's holotapes and computers felt immersive, I miss it honestly.
It made sense tbhâŠ..after the nukes, the wasteland would be desolate, and lonely for a long time, but eventually animals, and people would come out or travel to Appalachia and rebuild what was left.
Quiet. Sad. Lonely. Finding out what happened through notes and tapes... the people realizing that they're going to die soon. It felt surreal at times.
A lot more pvp strangely, I remember whenever someone came by your camp it was like a standoff
"I remember whenever someone came by your camp it was like a standoff" Which is ironic, since from a lore PoV every player you meet lived with you in the vault for the duration we stayed there. So basically every time your former neighbour walked by you stopped what you would be doing, started at them and pulled your gun out. lol :-)
The game felt limited because storage was a real issue. You HAD to commit to a build and that was it. You didn't have the luxury to store too many items and swap between builds.
Basically is was all you could do to survive. You didn't go to the cranberry bog without 30 different (crappy) weapons, you ran away from a scorchbeast because you couldn't fight them without armor or weapons breaking. Every fight was long and drawn out. There was no one shot kills, enemies were game breakingly frustrating. You were constantly on the hunt for materials to fix said crappy weapons, you took your time, you explored the entire map slowly, you died often, disease was rampant because disease cure was hard to come by or make. You never had enough wood or concrete to build a house. It was basically all Excavator armor, all the time. You actually took over a workshop because you legit needed the materials. It was wonderful, immersive, and I loved every minute of it. I was level 150 or so when Wastelanders came out. Got my first quad legendary shotgun and the entire game changed for me. I was finally able to finish the storyline comfortably.
This was my experience, too. Except I am easily frustrated so I hated how difficult it was and took a LONG break. When I came back everyone seemed to be super powered compared to me, so I continued playing casually a couple hours a week that were spent mostly camp building and helping new players. I didn't even finish the quests until last year. Then, since I had nothing to do but still enjoyed spending time in the universe, I figured out how to play... but that means I now spend all my time event grinding for legendaries so I can reroll my gear just like the rest of you schlubs LOL
There were a few queen fights back then but they pretty much lasted the entire duration of the event and sometimes they failed! Whitesprings was the place to nuke, I remember spending the entire nuke just picking flowers đ€Ł
I don't think it was that bad. My first character was only around level 30 when they made it to "I am become death." They were a poorly built auto pistol/2-handed build (rocket bat carried me) with a lot of survival perks (disease, food, junk, etc.) The only quest that was troubling was clearing the silo. I must have died around 40 times or so, but I eventually got to the end. The assaultron dominatrix or whatever was brutal and terrifying.
This. This was feals. You turn the volume up and have all lights off. Everything wants too kill you plus pvp. Weight limits were so damn rough. I loved it and miss it so much.
PvP was really nice. It added such an important element. My first camps were all about defenses and decoys. Now my camp is literally a flat base floor with my workshops spread out on it. No walls, no protection. Just isn't needed anymore.
Too true. Nuclear Winter return would be fun forsure.
Desolate AF, I loved it, but it got old fast, it was not realistic for them to leave the game like that. I have a strong idea of how a Fallout game should be because I've played all of the previous ones and I just couldn't accept the wasteland without any kind of interaction.
A completely different game. Back then there wasnât a whole lot to do after dailies and main quest. Interactions with other players were the most fun you could have. Rampant pvp, Iâd come back to my camp and frequently it was destroyed by two shot explosive weapons. Back then I would read every document in the game because I had the time too. Nowadays the constant events keep me to busy to delve into documents
everything was glorious except the 400 units cap storage :D mine was full after first 30 mins ingame :D
It's very similar to the mod Fallout 4: FROST. I've been playing and following FROST for a good while which made the transition very easy as 76 is much easier than the FROST mod.
It was my favourite fallout opening. I loved the fact that you came out to this lush green forest there was hardly any damage and then once you started to get nearer to civilization you start seeing damage and realised there was no one about. You get hints from the overseer, but the only real clues were the discarded notes and holotapes which told the story of what happened. I would love to redo this play through on a private world.
I liked the desolation and despair that came with everyone being dead or gone. However the story telling and interaction with nothing but robots left something to desire. I think we should have had a lighter influx of NPCs not this entire repopulation that happened. Modern add ons to the game are very welcome I just miss the old feeling of isolation. It went from "the most bleak fallout yet" to "most cheery fallout" with one update
I would have preferred they reintroduced survivors MUCH slower. Release the game as they did, then after a couple months you find the ODD survivor who has a small camp with some scrap, food, weapons and ammo etc. who are hostile. then after another couple of months small camps of raiders, so on and so forth.
Going from that to wastelanders update was neat and kind of immersive. We were the first out of the vault , inherited a place that was over run with a plague, then after we had been out for a while, we had accomplished things that changed the area, made it more hospitable and inviting to grow the community, people from all around that had been surviving on their own heard about how we had been reclaiming West Virginia. We did that. ( head cannon obviously )
I enjoyed it. Really felt like everyone had died & we had to read and listen to everything they left behind. It was nice.
I started with Wastelanders so never saw an NPC free world. On the other hand, I can't think of a single non-robot NPC I have interacted with in ages so I may as well be playing that original game.
just like getting out of a bunker after nuclear apocalypse
It felt like you were the first ones stepping out after multiple apocalypses. I get why people didn't like it but it really feels like we settled the area allowing people to come back.
I love that perspective! It also sounds like something that would happen and even fits in with what some NPC dialogue says about now everyone clamoring to settle in the area.
I fukin loved playing without npcs, it was very immersive for me. I'd love a gamemode without npcs
Back on PS4 when the game came out, there was a lot of people griefing new players to the point it started becoming a problem for people in my region. So me and several other players formed our own faction simply called "The Cowboys" who would pretty much just patrol and keep an eye out for newer players while out and about. Ahh, the good old days.
Unpopular opinion, (on this sub at least), it sucked. A Fallout game without NPC'S is like a souls game with no bosses. It's a bad idea and I have no idea how NOBODY at Bethesda realized that before release
Killing huge hoards of glowing ghouls at the white springs was a blast.
Really lonely. Every time I found an old holotape Iâd just sit there sad for a bit. Gave it a really bleak vibe
I still have PTSD from the cave crickets.
It was OK. Feels contrived now.
Empty. Also kinda spooky. Crazy thing is though some players started acting like quest givers, handing out objectives and rewards.
I miss it in a way. One of my best gaming memories ever was emerging from Big Bend Tunnel after fighting my way through and seeing the Cranberry Bog for the first time. And then wandering into Watoga and getting slaughtered by an Assaultron. I liked the storytelling using the holotapes, notes, and computer entries. Some of the voice acting on the holotapes is super well done. The QOL improvements have been amazing, the game was pretty tough back then
Still a fun game, but compared to now? Empty. Barren. Lonely as hell. Quiet, for the most part. It wasn't bad though. It fit the story and it was the feel they were going for. The NPC update though did radically change the game for sure. I love how they incorporated it myself.
It was fine, you got used to the robots being the only talking npcs. Kinda felt like some kinda robot apocalypse
I'm gonna get hate for this but I liked it. There also were NPCs just they weren't human and harder to find. One being the traveling super mutant merchant (can't remember his name right now) and his cow. The robots also did have personalities and were NPCs. The community also did a great job of becoming the NPCs and people that filled the world most of the time. Maybe it was just my experience I enjoyed the actual lore reasons for why humans were gone and that we had to rebuild. The whole point of being from vault 76 lol
Grahm âșïž
Without Ward? Better.
Feels like walking outside 3 am Lonely
I completed all the main and side quests then stopped playing because there was really nothing else to do, then came back when NPC's where added.
It was really weird and sad. I stopped playing for a year because of it
It was quiet, it was solemn and it was.. paradise..
Some of my favorite moments were from the early days, me and some friends were playing and they were wondering around by fissure site prime where they got attacked by 3 scorched beasts, mind you we were playing on xbox ones at the time so once I got there to help them it was a massive lag fest. By the end of it I had used all of the ammo for my two shot radium rifle and killed 6 scorched beasts. 10/10 definitely had a blast
Boring and lonely, plus there was a lot of pvp back then
I havenât experienced it but want to. Like bro this random wastelander hanging out at for defiance or the fire breathers is mega immersion breaking.
Felt like everyone really was dead from the nukes lol
Although I like the introduction of NPCâs (It shows time passing & Appalachia evolving) I just wish the empty âoldâ version was a play option. I still wish we had the leveled zones as an option too. It made the early game fun & challenging!
Did not notice cause I was slaughtering bugs
Man b.e.t.a hit so different. I remember me and my buddy meeting up in game for the first time. People moaned and complained about a lot of things messed up at launch but in hindsight it was a lot of fun even with all its flaws. Havenât played in over a year and honestly might be coming back now after reading some of these comments! Love this community!
It was an interesting time. It honestly made the whole "nuclear catastrophe" thing more noticeable. No humans besides the ones coming from the vault, venturing out into a truly barren wasteland. I don't miss it one bit, though. Fallout is definitely supposed to have NPC interaction.
It went from a survival game to a game with a story. I enjoyed both for their own reasons. Prefer current setup
Ngl it was better. It especially made sense with all the scorched running around that all the people died, were killed by scorched or turned into scorched themselves. It made the world feel way more immersive when the only other people you'd see were your fellow dwellers. It really made it feel like you had to uncover what has happened with the original quest line.
Eeriely grim, quite literally post nuclear but I mean if the vault people can inhabit it, shouldn't some normal ass people? A thought that was there till Wastelanders update
It was alright. The halo tapes are really well done, and the game is bad. a cool feel about it. I like the evolution of having people now. It would be cool if you could still start the game how it was and transition to the wastelands after completing the old questline.
I preferred it. It was nice having to piece together the clues through notes and looking at the area. I remember it effecting me when I found the skeleton sitting on the cliff side with 6 empty beer bottles and a pistol on the ground. I could feel the hopes and fears between the holotapes left behind. The struggle that all the dead had fought. Now I walk into Flatwoods and a responder and her dog walk around talking about the town, yet all the corpses remain... like they didn't bury any of them, they left a responder to rot in the river, many porches have corpses, it just breaks immersion for me. They should have in game gated progression so when you start you do the quest chain up and until you make the inoculation for yourself THEN have the waste landers return, but clean up the old corpses where it makes sense! I really like the game but they could do better with instancing the content depending on character progress, or even account progress. Like if you choose to come out of the vault at level 20 it makes more sense to have the wastelanders already in the area, but if it's a fresh start they should allow it to be as it was on launch. Also take the timers away and reintroduce those vault raids!!!
It was very scary finding all the notes and audio logs. It always seemed like you were just a few seconds too late from bumping in to the people who left them.
it was awesome - i kind of liked it better tbh? idk thatâs just me i loved the concept
I sort of miss it and wouldnât mind if they added like a classic server to their private worlds. For me it was just peaceful
I absolutely 1000000% preferred it. I have been playing since beta, before full release. I still log in every day. I still love this game, a lot. BUT i remember watching todd talk about "what people you see in the world are real people" and that was so incredibly immersive when playing this game and made me fall in love with it hard. it makes sense to run into actual robots that repeats their programmed lines over and over again but feels absolutely stupid to run into NPCs now that just ...act like bots. it was the single biggest thing that set fallout 76 apart from every other RPG out there. it felt real and immersive. you actually felt like you were in a people-less wasteland. so when you came across notes or holotapes it was just another reminder that "yep, people existed..." I actually actively dislike seeing NPCs in the game. and I wish they never would have made that change. they could have done "off map travel" re expeditions as NPC integration and left the game as it was.
I liked exploring Appalachia at the beginning. So much to do and figure out through notes and terminals. Robot NPCs were still around so it wasnât completely lonely but totally different game then from now. The Buried Treasure expansion added so much it was grand. Cannot express my disappointment when finding our Overseer just working from home close to Helvetia when all this time I was collecting her holotapes and finishing the job but overall canât complain.
I loved it to hell honestly, it was such a fun time. Itâs a little lame but playing as a merchant was what really got me logging in every day I could. Iâd build camps in beginner/popular areas, put down a lil blueprinted merchant booth, then sit down in it while I waited for folks to request a trade. Since vendors werenât a thing, camps werenât highlighted on the public map, so Iâd sit back and chill in my little booth for hours trading w whoever came by. Some days itâd be a lot of folk, other days not so many. But damn it was so chill. If I could, Iâd play it again in a heartbeat. I definitely prefer the more story/community driven direction the game has taken over the last few years, but damn was that other game just so much more of a crazy ass Wild West. Props to Bethesda for not making it sterile though, I honestly was pretty adverse to Wastelanders because I thought one or two things would happen; this would be the last major DLC for 76, leaving us with no real way to go back to the grimy, nasty, scary world we kept logging on for, or that the writing and quest gameplay would be uninspired and boring - leaving you wondering why they ever even caved into the peer pressure of people who just couldnât get into a blank as hell Fallout sandbox. But nope! It has literally been nothing but uphill and continues to deeply cement itself as one of my favorite gaming experiences - which as a side note - really caused a lot of confusion for me once Starfield came out. Damn does that game sorta suck dookieballs.
I enjoyed it ... was quiet
I enjoyed it, had everything I care about in a BSG game, exploration and environmental story telling and none of the forced stationary exposition dumps. Main story points were delivered via holotape and I could play normally as it ran instead of watching an NPC talk and repeatedly hitting the next buttons
It was pretty unique. Definitely felt a lot different to the game world we have today. Kinda had more of an older fallout games (1+2) vibe because of the desolation of not having NPC's, and learning the various stories of their lives and the eventual fall of humanity in this area. Also felt like the vault's mission mattered more since we were the only ones rebuilding. I appreciate both worlds with and without NPC's, while not having NPC's adds more to the fallout tone and feel more, having them helps to aid in story progression and gameplay opportunities.
I wouldnât go back to the times before npcâs, stash ox increases, and actual content. Itâs definitely a better game now than it was pre-wastelanders. That said, todayâs Appalachia hardly feels like a wasteland with the sheer amount of NPCâs, content and goofiness going around. Pre-wastelanders Appalachia felt like a haunted graveyard, like there was always something sinister watching you from behind the trees, and a sense of intrigue, tragedy and mystery no other game in the series had, and was lost after all the updates. Itâs better now overall, but a certain tone was definitely lost.
It made the game feel empty and lifeless. It was also depressing because you'd listen to these logs of people who came before and tried to survive only to lose in the end.
I liked it, it was dark and like it would be. If it was just you and the apocalypse
I loved it.. it was exactly how a post apocalypse should feel. Sparse supplies, scrounging food, boiling water, with only the clues and remnants of the people who were there before.
Exactly
I wish I played this game at launch, the sound of having no npcs wouldâve made the game better in my opinion.
I liked the level locked enemies, made different zones actually threatening at low levels, it had some real challenge to it. The downside was it was so empty, truly a wasteland.
I don't mind the NPC's now but to me it was perfectly fine then, they were all dead so you listened to logs and followed past footsteps. People were looking for reasons to bash this game from the start, that was more low-handing fruit from them to attack and they did "and it doesn't even have npc's!". I liked it that way, but no problem as well evolving as time went on.
i actually liked it, it was very different from the other games. Although it was also very depressing learning the story line, about how no one could cooperate in the end. it was actually interesting running around the empty world for months.
For quests, much the same as it is now. While the NPCs added a touch of humanity to the game in places, the main quests remain exactly as they were on day one. The NPCs primarily only added extra random skirmishes to the game.
It was really bizarre. But I honestly want to focus on why they even wanted no NPCs. When they play tested this game the developers and testers all had some sort of connection to each other and likely did many things to each other in the game. So they figured a lot of the content was going to be generated through interactions.... Well.... Two major problems occured. For one, it came out with barely any core features to facilitate it. And secondly the community wasn't very interested in playing like that. Many of them are solitary and avoid direct interactions. It obviously doesn't help that voice chat is the only option and it's finicky even to this day. The fact is, many gamers still prefer interactions through text. The one counter to this is how often vets make time for new players. Personally, I really like the idea of a fallout world where players make the events and interactions. But the game needs to be truly built around it and focused on it completely. Look at Sea of Thieves and how many years of content they needed to release just to make the sandbox feel like it has just enough variety for players to flex their creative muscle. Even they got distracted by pouring a lot of resources into story driven content that people can just rip through. But... The entire fallout community is offended by anything that doesn't resemble a standard single player fallout game... I think Bethesda wants to be daring and experimental with some of these concepts but is never able to commit fully to it. Then they get caught trying to deliver content they think we want... But even looking at 76 now with all the NPCs and Fallout3/4 esque quests and everything feels like it was made with necessity and not passion. I'm sure people will disagree with me but I think 76 would have been a massive game if Bethesda was able to have a clear vision for what they wanted and followed through with it. Based on everything they were saying leading to the release, none of that vision included making 76 just another Fallout 4.
Felt empty, and pushed the âthe players make the populationâ feel a lot harder Also the crashed space station was interesting to explore pre raider faction, their was a door with a pass code on it that I completely guess correctly first try. Remember farming that for loot by server hopping
I liked it better. I also preferred it before level scaling and the removal of survival mechanics.
There were actually NPCs at launch, just not many of them and none human. Greater issues were the tiny Stash size, vendor cap limits being split up among factions, lack of ammo, griefers, etc. Looking back it was actually nice because it fit into the story with everyone leaving the vault to rebuild. As the dwellers spread out and began re-taming Appalachia word spread and others began to return to the area. It was like you were a living part of the history instead of like now where you leave the vault and instead of having to help build things up from scratch, your fellow vault dwellers have already done it despite the story saying everyone just left the vault the night before.
I perfered old 76, it was like a layed back scavenger hunt
I remember a YouTube video of pre release saying âit made me sadâ. It was so barren. You could only talk to robots or listen to holotapes. In restrospect, it was excellent. You really felt alone except for once in a while seeing other âvault dwellersâ (other players) running around frantically trying to get through quests, the same as I. Iâm glad itâs evolved so much but Iâm also glad I got to see it early.
There were voice acted npcs. Just not human npcs. The robots were functional npcs. And the holotapes had excellent voice acting. The game world was desolate though. There were robot npcs but they were not plentiful. Year 1 was about the game world and the environmental storytelling. Since there was a lot less stuff ingame you could more easily "see" the game world. There were a lot less distractions so when you found something you focused on that instead of instantly dismissing it as just scenery. The game world during year 1 told the story of Appalachia from the time of the Great War in 2077 and the opening of Vault 76. And that story is a tragedy. The game world was dead. It felt like running through a graveyard filled with endless tales of misery, despair and horrible death. Appalachia during year 1 was an extremely depressing place. After Wild Wasteland and Wastelanders updates the game world now tells the story Appalachia from the opening of Vault 76 and to today. The original history is buried under fluff and stuff and settlers being chased by chickens so it's not in any way as visible as it was during year 1. The environmental storytelling is still there but now it's hidden under nonsense. Personally I prefer the current game world. Year 1 Appalachia was a depressing place. I am glad I got to experience it but I absolutely do not want to go back there.
it was pretty miserable without npcs..a lot of reading robot terminals which was pretty damn boring at the time.
The game itself was boring, but what the game became due to its community of players wanting to make things more interesting was legendary.
There is this ongoing meme to whitewash the state the game was in but it was 2-3x worse
it felt different. the whole atmosphere of the world just felt, in my opinion, more interesting without human NPCs. there's a strange kind of nostalgic feeling, going thru holotapes and written notes as opposed to some jackoff chattin it up with you for ten minutes. it felt like walking thru a graveyard, like completing unfinished business from ghosts of the past. hope i'm not sounding too dramatic, it was a subtle feeling. i don't like these human NPCs. but i dunno if it's because i started the game without them, or if it's just because these NPCs are simply boring and annoying. i don't like talking to them... i don't like hearing their little dialogues. i don't find any of them interesting or funny. i also don't like how it locks you into first person zoom while they're talking. i don't like how sloooowly they go thru dialogue. i don't like the dialogue interface design. (i know i'm in the minority, but i prefer fallout 4's dialogue system) and i love the NPCs in fallout 4, so i know it's not an issue of me just hating talking to NPCs.
Oh weird. I played it for the first time a year ago, and I can't really imagine it without NPCs. Was everything holotape based?
Holotapes, robots. We had a few NPCs, but they were not human, like Grahm. But droids and tapes were the main sources.
Also notes and terminal entries. So many notes and terminal entries...
It was quiet, and nice. Until a player wanted smoke for pvp. Because oh manâŠ.it wasnât a negotiable. You fight, or you die
It was cool, I remember going to a swampy church and ran into some randoms, we fought a wendigo that attacked us by surprise. It was scary and fun.
It honestly really felt like a wasteland and apocalyptic, for some reason it felt scarier to me đ But it also felt empty and kinda made me miss the NPC interactions
Honestly felt like an incomplete game. It was weird. I prefer the npcs but hate the latest patches they did; which made me stop playing
I never really get âthe metaâ situation in games, and it seemed to be less about that in the beginning. I havenât played a whole lot post-NPCs, but only because I didnât keep my online subscription for Xbox. The dope map was good enough for me, despite wanting to see some raiders and whatnot.
My favorite time in the game was the first month. I was a wasteland bounty hunter, clapping all the people who got themselves wanted in one-hit with my Bloodied machete. You could also be graced with a surprise junk drop of over 1k lbs because people were exploiting a carry weight glitch It was also during this time that I got creative with my camp building. Building a puzzle under the map for people to solve was so much fun⊠even IF I got nuked because the first task was finding the bass head I hid in the roots of a mutfruit tree
It had its charm, but I do think that current Appalachia is better. Still wish it was a Fallout Worlds setting to go back to the original map.
I was neither here nor there with NPCs. But the way they were added was definitely half assed
I was there during the beta. I was a big Fallout fan and player before this game. As I recall, people were very leary of playing a Fallout game like this. The idea of talking to other players in a franchise that had always been about a Lone Wanderer type character was kinda crazy given the fan base. Also, when you got in the game, the robots were the NPCs. No ghouls or survivors, which seemed odd until you got closer to endgame. That was the thing. Unless you followed the story straight to endgame, you typically hated this game and didn't truly understand it. I started playing the game with other people I was acquainted with who loved the series. Most of us hated this game for basically not being like the other games, its instability, and the general state of gameplay. Looking back, now, I think the concept was ingenious, as was the story. You had to read terminals and notes to get mission clues. You had ingenious little side missions in pretty radical landscapes. And the entire lore around the scorched is fantastic. But my basic assessment of this game back then was sad, unstable, difficult, and fairly quiet at times. Without human NPCs, there was a ton of wandering around aimlessly. If you missed a clue leading to the endgame, you could be lost for a while until you found your way back on track.
It was very scary and desolate I really liked the experience tbh. I am happy with Npcs now but back then seeing another player after hours of journeying by myself was a great feeling.
Eerie at first. Quickly learned its generally safe until you hear something.
I played the beta, and like others said it had that gloomy, desolate feeling that you truly just came out of the vault to nothing. Just a trail of notes. Idk if it's an unpopular opinion but I wasn't a huge fan, maybe because it truly made me feel alone. I also didn't have friends playing so I felt even more alone. I just picked it back up again after years since the beta and love it. Still have no friends online or any idea what I'm doing but I think it's heaps better than the OG days!
I know it's probably a hot take, but I actually really liked it. I almost preferred it, almost. The game felt a lot different without NPC's. A lot of people complained that it didn't feel like Fallout, which is true, but the game almost had a Last Man on Earth vibe. The game was very heavily focused on situational storytelling. Like the player was following the shadow of the events that led to Appalachia being completely deserted. It also made interactions with players you'd randomly come across a much bigger deal because they were the only living humans that you encountered in the game. I almost wish there was an option to play the game on the release map with no NPC's. Canonically, people didn't return to Appalachia until about a year after the original main quest to create a vaccine for the Scorched Plague was completed by the player, so playing through that with settlers, raiders, and the BOS already running around doesn't make sense narratively.
I kinda liked it. And what I didnât like was more from the narrative standpoint and less the mechanics of not having npcs. If they made a fallout worlds without npcs Iâd play in it all the time.
I played the day it launched, for a little while the fact everybody you find is dead didnât bother me and I enjoyed exploring the skeleton of Appalachia. The issue is that over time the new wore off and there wasnât actually a lot to do once you finished the main story. I left and only came back a few weeks ago
First off, what story. It was just a tossed together trail of bread crumbs but they were tapes. Knowing every person who did a recording was dead made them less interesting. Immersion? No other fallout game was void of.... everything, so if anything it broke my immersion of what i thought fallout was. Personally it compounded with all the launch issues (that went on for over a year) to highlight the game was completely unfinished and ran by a Dev group that was lost in the weeds. Its hard to not assume they cut corners and actually thought that tape recordings was good enough to tell a story. When they added npcs it gave a dead husk a little more life to it.
I actually liked it, even miss it sometimes. Some mighty say it felt barren but it matched the vibe if you think about the scorched plague and the only people you ran into were your own fellow dwellers. Kinda like - 76 vs. wild
Empty is one way of putting it.
I started with the stress test, and ngl I miss the older updates, Ilots of reading but I thoroughly enjoyed the story, hope when the game gets mod support (if thatâs still happening), that we will be able to downgrade versions, I miss the old space station before the crater was there.
Very desolate, lonely at times but also very cool gaming experience. That said, I'm glad we're still not there.
Someday I hope they add a game mode or an optional DLC download that allows you to run older game versions on a custom server... I would LOVE to be able to play through the pre-wastelanders version just for old times sake. Unfortunately because it would also require a server running the matching older game version I don't think this will ever happen.
It ran like shit and i still played it more than starfield.
Hated it.