Thursday, April 23rd 2020
Unforgiving Wasteland: Fallout 76 Players Losing Their Best Weapons to NPC Bug
Players of Bethesda's Fallout 76 have been met with a relatively underwhelming game from the very beginning, starting with the number of bugs and puzzling design decisions that shipped with it. Since then, Fallout 76 has definitely become more polished; however, like any good Bethesda game (and one as expansive and with as many systems as a Fallout, it has to be said), Fallout 76 just recently introduced what has to be one of the most aggravating bugs of all time with the introduction of its Wastelanders expansion.
The expansion, which has been met as a much-needed step towards the game feeling like a proper Fallout, introduces Wastelanders, or NPCs that actually go on about their business, and are available to accompany you in a variety of missions. The Wasteland now seems a lot less empty... Though thanks to the introduced bug, you know might wish it to be the desolate place it always has been. You see, players are reporting that when they die alongside one such NPC, they sometimes end up looting the player character's corpse... For their very best weapon. Which they then proceed in using when you respawn. And which you can't get back, because you can't pickpocket them, or actually kill them - they just go to sleep. If this was a feature, this might've been a cautionary tale in living in a post-apocalyptic setting where every man fends for himself... As it stands, though, it's just a particularly wicked bug that can undo hours upon hours of grinding. Look after the break for a video that shows just that moment of disillusionment.
Sources:
Fallout Image on Reddit, TechSpot
The expansion, which has been met as a much-needed step towards the game feeling like a proper Fallout, introduces Wastelanders, or NPCs that actually go on about their business, and are available to accompany you in a variety of missions. The Wasteland now seems a lot less empty... Though thanks to the introduced bug, you know might wish it to be the desolate place it always has been. You see, players are reporting that when they die alongside one such NPC, they sometimes end up looting the player character's corpse... For their very best weapon. Which they then proceed in using when you respawn. And which you can't get back, because you can't pickpocket them, or actually kill them - they just go to sleep. If this was a feature, this might've been a cautionary tale in living in a post-apocalyptic setting where every man fends for himself... As it stands, though, it's just a particularly wicked bug that can undo hours upon hours of grinding. Look after the break for a video that shows just that moment of disillusionment.
17 Comments on Unforgiving Wasteland: Fallout 76 Players Losing Their Best Weapons to NPC Bug
...should still be possible, considering the number of bugs :laugh:
(to "permit" this one anyway)
I would call it a divine intervention. :P
I call myself blessed for having experienced the game around that time... no big exploits around and they caught the biggest one in time. Game lasted a good 60-70 hours for me, and then it got stale as hell. Well, it was already an exercise in below mediocre gaming but ok. But stuff generally did work, did not crash and the only hack I encountered was people dropping supply crates around me everywhere. Empty ones...
But its quite hilarious to finally see NPCs in the game post launch and then poof, major bug again :D Its like they just can't help themselves.
Though honestly, it's not Bethesda I really mistrust. I mean, I don't trust things coming from them. But that has more to do with them becoming a puppet of their own financial machination, Zenimax. They would bring mobile strategies into Bethesda's feature releases if they could. They only know/care about brand. Everything they do is branding and monetization. I think people at Bethesda, Todd included, are able to see what they built with their games... the communities and fandoms brought about. And at one point that's all they wanted in their games. They put the love into it and it looks like they got it back. So they know how that goes. It would probably kill me to work for them and witness all of this, knowing how things used to be. But at this point it is like their hands are tied. A lot of their words are not their words, you know? They're stuck doing the stuff passed down to them. I'm sure 76 was still their idea, but I'm betting they didn't have that much say in whether they did something like it or not, let alone how much time they would have, or whether it would have certain 'bonus' features... and the handling of the problems has that similar 'passed-down strategy' vibe. Like, you know they could do better, so why can't they? Indeed. Limited budgets and timelines... expected margins and demands met. Strategies rolled out. That's daddy Zenimax talkin to brother Todd and his Bethesda boys, who can only play the hands they're dealt by 'the family'.
Does that mean I forgive the things that happened? No. I just think that given the nature of things looming over top of all of BGS, they probably could not succeed with all of their effort. Of course when Todd talks of direction, he's going to talk with excitement, as though they're doing all of the things they want to do. Doesn't mean that's actually the case. When I watch interviews I often wonder what is really on his mind. I get the impression there are a lot of things he can't say... things that may not be as attributed to Bethesda as he's looking to make them out as being. It's been strange... I have a hard time getting a sense for how much control Bethesda has really had over everything. The disclosure isn't there. What used to be out of character is now more the norm. Something has changed and they don't act like themselves, while trying EXTRA hard to talk like they are. Tinfoil hat territory, for sure. But I do find most of their decisions and presentations suspicious. It's like things are slowly fading out and being replaced to avoid the shock, but at this point the revamping is already far along. I don't think people realize that possibility that there is no new Bethesda coming... that this may be the new direction fully realized.
Even the way they make and put out stuff is different. They're not known for churning things out that aren't even normal for them. And unsurprisingly they are very bad at it. They work a long time on games with very predictable aspects that people have come to expect. This whole 76 thing... it's not really what they do at all. In that light, there may still be hope for the next ES, given the time they're putting in and having dropped other stuff. That's more like how they used to do things. But that's where the issues are. I think behind the scenes, Bethesda doesn't necessarily get to operate in the way that it's been accustomed to doing well with. It's hard to say what's really going on there, but the leadership direction has obviously changed a lot over these past few years, with no sign of letting up. I highly suspect that there have been some major shake-ups in their decision-making lattice between Skyrim and FO76. It looks like Bethesda is gradually being gutted for its brands and titles. When you have what they had with these games and their unique presence, you wouldn't give that up willingly. And yet, given the reaction from the communities who supported those games heavily, it's hard to even see them as the same company. They may have a lot of the same people, but in terms of how it functions, they can't do the same things.
How does this happen? It's a complicated problem... one you only get when leadership in big companies mutates.
It just weirds me out because that's not how they're presenting themselves. They act like they're the same old company, while nearly everything about what they do is acutely different. I keep coming back to the question of how any of this could've been what they wanted to do. I have a hard time believing that it was. But they throw themselves on it, so... what's going on there? I think a lot of other people who mistrust them feel the same, even without reading that far in. It's just a vibe you get. What they say and what they do keeps shooting them in the foot. The lack of forthcoming info with regards to their decisions and goals makes them hard to trust. They're so bent on it, it's kind of surreal. Most companies, you would think, would course correct if they had the power. I really wonder if Bethesda has that power. I don't think they do... and maybe them acting like they do is just part of the plan for moving 76 along. It makes them look to me, like a dancing monkey. You only see it dance, but never do you see its time in the cage. It's safe to say the monkey doesn't run the show... people don't think about that because it IS the show.
The theme I see with them is blocking avenues. They're shutting themselves out to the things that used to pull people in and becoming generic. They've already been behind on team development, if technical and design shortcomings of their games are any indication - hard to think they have the capacity to meet modern standards. They were probably feeling dug-in. I seriously wonder if they've low-key been totally bought off. Probably hoping to get enough movement to get back on track for those GOTY titles... many a studio has lost their way on that path. Hard to consider Bethesda hard up with GOTY titles under the belt, but their whole ethos was free creativity back then. I think a lot of budget and time was lost to their amicably lackadaisical approach to making their games. From the top down they were dreamers, not business people. So making successful games isn't necessarily enough for them to be able to continue. Only a matter of time before business snatches up the leadership driving that and winds up corrupting the yields. This is not a business where studios can sustainably make AAA games and yet operate like a big indie. That's why Zenimax is where it is in relation to BGS. Trying to build a platform for doing things they want to do, on things that aren't related, and being consumed by that growth. Funny how that works. You try to free yourself from the financial/practical side and wind up imprisoned by what was supposed to keep you separated from it. Usually it's musicians who go through this the most, but game studios aren't immune either. What is a studio but a team of artists with ambitions for art? Shit happens when that mixes with 'the biz'.
Really kinda sad if I'm right. At some point there were good intentions. But I think they've largely been snuffed out by the churning machine at this point. We've all seen it happen before. And people always say "They used to be the BEST."
And that is Todds problem. The man is not stuck because of lacking budget or time. He has been steady digging his own Technical Debt hole. And the team offers no solutions. Only band aids. They literally cannot help themselves anymore and their work in the engines is just a showcase of it. Gross inefficiency left and right. Workarounds that have grown into 'quirks of the game', and archaic concepts mixed with new technology (SP game engine with online functions, FO76). They even KNOW they are fucked beyond measure, when they put out press releases to preempt their bug ridden crap. 'There will be bugs'... OK? How can we ever explain that as a lack of time and budget? Releasing is always a choice, as is the companys acceptance of major issues in releases. The announcement of bugs underlines that: 'We CHOOSE to release now, knowing shit is broken'. That is company culture, 100%.
And the confirnation of that, to me, is that none of this is new. Even before launcher and platform was even on a roadmap the same problems existed. Skyrim is just yet another exercise of horrible dev work. Nothing the game has was actually a great joy to use out of vanilla. The game lost depth, perk trees made no sense. Zero balance or logic to progression or making a specialized class (compare this to the free form class system of Morrowind... and even Oblivion... not an improvement in any way). And most importantly: the engine was never fundamentally fixed. They just left broken code in, and happily iterated on it, too. Capital sin, that. Unless you have scoped the impact of those choices for the entire life cycle of said engine, something they clearly never did. And then they just took that online...:roll:
The chronic lack of talent now also permeates the world and immersive qualities itself. Its not just performing poorly, some stuff also just doesnt work as intended. Spawn issues, timing/FPS bugs. Clipping issues, falling through the world...That is dev noob territory! Its the type of crap you expect from a Steam Greenlight release from some geek in an attic! WITH a fat Early access or Alpha tag on it...