Fallout 76 General Thread - Bethesda does it again!

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Scary thing is that that probably is the compressed version.

Bethseda archives generally don't use the best compression available anyway to prevent load times from chugging too hard, and they have a bad habit of not optimizing the file formats they use either.
So do they just add code without taking any redundancies out or what? Like, what's the process here?
 
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So do they just add code without taking any redundancies out or what? Like, what's the process here?

Let's say there is a 3.0 GB compressed BSA that needs an update to fix several dozen textures, meshes, and scripts.

Betheseda will crack open the original on their end, add all the fixed versions, put in anything missing, then rebundle the file.

Assuming the fixed version is still roughly the same size compressed, that means when they send you an update, you have to download a NEW version of that BSA file, meaning you are downloading a 3.0 GB compressed BSA update to the original file.

The only good news is that if you have to reinstall the game later from a backup, they will install all files from the original that match what they have on their servers, then download any updated files for the remainder.
 
I just had an idea that'd placate Bethesda's sudden lust for multiplayer while still keeping Fallout fans happy:

>update your shitty engine to actually support four companions at the same time
>release fallout with optional multiplayer where a friend can take over a companion for 4-player vault-dwelling fun
>online companions can be turned off to not be able to shoot friendly/neutral NPCs or initiate dialogue with NPCs to prevent griefing
 
The metacritic scores aren't looking good lol
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-76/user-reviews

EVERYBODY MAD
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we live in a society
we live in a society.png


200 IQ reviewer reporting in
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2000 IQ enlightened middle ground reviewer reporting in
"7/10 it's ok"
2000 IQ reviewer.png


is this guy for real? surely this is a shill, "it was on sale"?? nigger this is launch day and you're calling it GOTY
wut.png
 

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The metacritic scores aren't looking good lol
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-76/user-reviews

EVERYBODY MAD
View attachment 592603

we live in a society
View attachment 592598

200 IQ reviewer reporting in
View attachment 592599

2000 IQ enlightened middle ground reviewer reporting in
"7/10 it's ok"
View attachment 592602

is this guy for real? surely this is a shill, "it was on sale"?? nigger this is launch day and you're calling it GOTY
View attachment 592605

1.7 User Score on metacritic
Not bad Todd.
 
So, what is the reasoning behind no NPCs in this game? Did they bank on emergent gameplay through player interaction?

Sounds boring af.

Speculation from having modded Bethesda's abortion of a Gamebryo engine:

NPCs are the weakest part of their tech. No, really, NPCs are fucking awful on the backend. Everything about them is terrible. They're insanely stupid... half of designing any content for a Bethesda-engine game is designing it around the retarded behavior of NPCs. They're glitchy as hell.

The only thing in their engine almost as bad as NPCs... Is the quest scripting.

Two things 76 basically did away with.
 
Speculation from having modded Bethesda's abortion of a Gamebryo engine:

NPCs are the weakest part of their tech. No, really, NPCs are fucking awful on the backend. Everything about them is terrible. They're insanely stupid... half of designing any content for a Bethesda-engine game is designing it around the exceptional behavior of NPCs. They're glitchy as hell.

The only thing in their engine almost as bad as NPCs... Is the quest scripting.

Two things 76 basically did away with.
So, they realized their engine was incapable of running content in a game, so they solved that problem by cutting out the content from the "game".
 
Speculation from having modded Bethesda's abortion of a Gamebryo engine:

NPCs are the weakest part of their tech. No, really, NPCs are fucking awful on the backend. Everything about them is terrible. They're insanely stupid... half of designing any content for a Bethesda-engine game is designing it around the exceptional behavior of NPCs. They're glitchy as hell.

The only thing in their engine almost as bad as NPCs... Is the quest scripting.

Two things 76 basically did away with.

Some added notes.

NPCs in Morrowind were dumb as hell, but arguably they worked the best because their coding was so simple in that game.

Oblivion introduced 'Radiant AI" to try and make them smarter, having them perform semi-randomized contextual behavior like engaging in small talk or following a schedule, but it was a buggy system because the game did not adjust well to script crapout nor certain NPCs having their behavior modified. Fallout 3 ironed out some issues with this, but NPCs were still pretty dumb there too.

New Vegas tried improving on some things like AI pathing and adjusting to sudden changes like certain people dying, but it wasn't much better than TESIV/FO3.

Skyrim introduced some fixes to further flesh out the system and give NPCs a better range of reactions to certain situations, which was a lot better than what we got with the predecessor games when it worked, but if all those fixes shit the bed, NPCs were still stupid.

Fallout 4 used the same system and was prone to the same flaws.

tl;dr: The NPC framework requires extensive tweaks and bugtesting to make sure NPCs don't turn paint chip eating stupid, and Bethseda has rarely managed to put as much work into assuring that as they should.
 
New Vegas tried improving on some things like AI pathing and adjusting to sudden changes like certain people dying, but it wasn't much better than TESIV/FO3.

The idea that Bethesda NPCs even have "pathing" AI hurts my brain.

For anyone who doesn't know how it works behind the scenes: Bethesda NPCs are essentially blind to the world they're in. They don't see the same world you do. They see a separate, mostly hand-crafted simplified version of the world called the "navmesh" that tells them where they're supposed to go. Basically they're on tracks. Which is why sometimes you'll see one of your companions run around a building rather than cut through the alley you went through, or something of that nature - it's because the designers forgot to tell them that alley existed, so they will never go down it given their own "choice" in the matter.

ck02.jpg


That red stuff? That's the world as NPCs see it. If it's not on the red floor, NPCs won't go there unless basically forced to. If you somehow force them into an area that has no navmesh data, they become myopic retards. They're *supposed* to be able to cope with it, but in practice they rarely do. At all.

It's also why the Settler system Fallout 4 was so damned broken. Ever wonder why an NPC would just run into a wall, energetically, for minutes straight? It's because while his entity was constrained to the physics mesh, his AI wasn't. His AI insisted there was a clear spot there, but you built a fence there. All of the building pieces in FO4 were supposed to have their own bits of navmesh attached, but that's just slapping more bandaids on top of an existing bandaid, and in practice it often just confused the NPCs worse.
 
The idea that Bethesda NPCs even have "pathing" AI hurts my brain.

For anyone who doesn't know how it works behind the scenes: Bethesda NPCs are essentially blind to the world they're in. They don't see the same world you do. They see a separate, mostly hand-crafted simplified version of the world called the "navmesh" that tells them where they're supposed to go. Basically they're on tracks. Which is why sometimes you'll see one of your companions run around a building rather than cut through the alley you went through, or something of that nature - it's because the designers forgot to tell them that alley existed, so they will never go down it given their own "choice" in the matter.

ck02.jpg


That red stuff? That's the world as NPCs see it. If it's not on the red floor, NPCs won't go there unless basically forced to. If you somehow force them into an area that has no navmesh data, they become myopic exceptional individuals. They're *supposed* to be able to cope with it, but in practice they rarely do. At all.

It's also why the Settler system Fallout 4 was so damned broken. Ever wonder why an NPC would just run into a wall, energetically, for minutes straight? It's because while his entity was constrained to the physics mesh, his AI wasn't. His AI insisted there was a clear spot there, but you built a fence there. All of the building pieces in FO4 were supposed to have their own bits of navmesh attached, but that's just slapping more bandaids on top of an existing bandaid, and in practice it often just confused the NPCs worse.

Oh, that's not the worst part.

The worst part is that the AI, when scripted to go from point A to point B, they will often do stupid shit like loop around in mid stride if you happen to be following them, even if you are supposed to, simply because they are married to this asinine issue where if you try to stick very close to them, they freak out, forcing you to remain a certain distance away from them at all times lest you make them loop their own tracks.

The AI seems to have a consistent issue with dealing with the player except under incredibly strict parameters, and that's assuming all the AI scripting is working as originally intended, and that also assumes the player won't do anything that is unexpected.


A good example can be seen after "When Freedom Calls" in Fallout 4, as your characters head back to Sanctuary.

The AI scripted characters, led by Preston Garvey, follow a strict routine, and those characters will expect you to follow along at the same pace, make the same stops they do, and otherwise remain a certain distance behind them.

If you just fast travel to Sanctuary, which is the sanest idea, you skip any issues.

It's when you try to walk with them the stupid happens.

They generally can adapt all the way up to the Sanctuary bridge so long as you don't go insane and shoot at them or they don't get attacked between the Red Rocket Station and Sanctuary, which is unlikely, unless you modded the game.

It when they reach the bridge weird shit usually happens.

1. They will walk AROUND the bridge, despite it having a navmesh to walk across, simply because the navmesh of the bridge is very narrow thanks to the fact its partially damaged, meaning they will walk through the river.

2. They will try to walk across the bridge, one or more falls through the damaged portion and this causes a lot of roundabout looping till they all get to Sanctuary.

Rarely do they all make it across the bridge in a relatively single file line across the navmeshing without incident, and if you cross the bridge first before they are generally committed to doing so themselves, they will rarely follow you, usually opting to go around it for some inane reason.
 
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Someone took a photo of their game, with the piece of cardboard representing the game disc.
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That's so infuriatingly petty of them to do. I didn't think Bethesda could sink any lower but here they are, selling cardboard instead of a physical disc so you'll be forced to download the game online
 
Well of course the diehards are gonna buy it. Todd Howard could literally walk into their bedrooms and shit directly into their mouths and they would still have the audacity to ask for more.

But I think this time, for people who actually have a modicum of brain function, they're gonna look at this and think to themselves "Wow, this is awful" and not buy it. It's literally worse and more unstable than Fallout 4 and New Vegas (great Fallout but let's not kid ourselves, that was a wreck), a majority of popular Youtubers are, at best, saying it's a lifeless boring shell of a game, and at worst calling it a disaster. Coupled with the outdated and obsolete engine and shitty networking and anti-cheat, and you got an explosion waiting to happen.
 
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