FALLOUT 76 (for those not playing RDR2)

[Eivion]

16 hours ago, cwoy2j said:

I don't play many multi player games so I dunno. I played Destiny a while back and it didn't require a PS Plus membership.

Except for strikes, gambit, crucible, & raids. I blame this stuff more on Sony and MS.

[cwoy2j]

19 hours ago, Eivion said:

Except for strikes, gambit, crucible, & raids. I blame this stuff more on Sony and MS.

I didn't have a PS Plus membership back when I played it and did stuff like crucible, raids, etc. But again, this was a while back on PS3. 

[AxB]

We'll, there you have it. Last generation (PS3 & XBox360) online play was free on Sony and Xbox live exclusive (ie, paid subscription) on Microsoft. This generation, everybody pays to play online, or plays offline for free. It's part of the reason every game has multiplayer modes now. Although Sony was smart enough to realise some people hate that, and made God of War and Spider-Man for them.

[Eivion]

So I'm going to need Bethesda to get there shit together on updates. I'm playing this on rental for now so it kind of sucks when an update is nearly the size of the damn game.

[tbarrie]

7 hours ago, AxB said:

This generation, everybody pays to play online, or plays offline for free.

Okay, but for a game with both online and single-player modes to require you to pay a monthly "membership" fee before it'll load at all is crazypants. And if I'm reading El Dragon and cwoy2j's posts correctly, that's the case with 76?

[CSC]

There's no single-player mode in 76 in that you need to be connected to a server to play.  Same as Destiny.  You can be playing on your own but no connection to the server = no ability to play.  I'm sure(?) there's a way to do a private server, so you are playing by yourself but it's still within the online framework, which is probably how it's justified.  

[cwoy2j]

15 hours ago, CSC said:

There's no single-player mode in 76 in that you need to be connected to a server to play.  Same as Destiny.  You can be playing on your own but no connection to the server = no ability to play.  I'm sure(?) there's a way to do a private server, so you are playing by yourself but it's still within the online framework, which is probably how it's justified.  

This article says there will be private servers but they wouldn't be available at launch. 

https://www.pcgamer.com/fallout-76-private-servers/

[CSC]

That's as good a reason as any to wait to play the game. 

[RIPPA]

Plus - follow up stories (that one is from August) says it could be up to a year from now before private servers happen.

Most likely because mods are going to be tied into the private servers

[John E. Dynamite]

Gamestops are being destroyed, Bethesda is crumbling, Metacritic is painted red and I'm sittin' on my futon playing  New Vegas for the first time. I spend 10 entire dollars on it. Not really a WRPG guy since I never dug Elderscrolls or Bioware and never invested in a decent PC, but I'm capable of enjoying them and I'm certainly enjoying this one. Apparently I'm getting really lucky on the game not crashing on me, Level 24 now and haven't had it crash on me since my first time in Novac ages ago.

But yeah man, it's a Zen-ass way of living, never buying new stuff. Looking forward to RDR2 when it is remastered for my Sony Playstation Sentient Eyeball Transplants in 20XX.

[tbarrie]

5 hours ago, John E. Dynamite said:

Apparently I'm getting really lucky on [New Vegas] not crashing on me, Level 24 now and haven't had it crash on me since my first time in Novac ages ago.

I've heard it had serious issued at launch, but I bought the Game of the Year edition and didn't find it any more unstable than other games of comparable complexity.

[SirSmUgly]

3 hours ago, John E. Dynamite said:

Gamestops are being destroyed, Bethesda is crumbling, Metacritic is painted red and I'm sittin' on my futon playing  New Vegas for the first time. I spend 10 entire dollars on it. Not really a WRPG guy since I never dug Elderscrolls or Bioware and never invested in a decent PC, but I'm capable of enjoying them and I'm certainly enjoying this one. Apparently I'm getting really lucky on the game not crashing on me, Level 24 now and haven't had it crash on me since my first time in Novac ages ago.

But yeah man, it's a Zen-ass way of living, never buying new stuff. Looking forward to RDR2 when it is remastered for my Sony Playstation Sentient Eyeball Transplants in 20XX.

Fallout: New Vegas is only the best RPG of all-time. Enjoy! 

(Alpha Protocol, of course, is the second-best RPG of all-time.)

[The Man Known as Dan]

I do really think it's a shame 76 is basically becoming the new Andromeda. It is a flawed game, but it still is a fun game with a great world to explore.

 

[John E. Dynamite]

53 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said:

Fallout: New Vegas is only the best RPG of all-time. Enjoy! 

(Alpha Protocol, of course, is the second-best RPG of all-time.)

Maybe, but have you ever emulated Live A Live your freshman year of college?

Bless the System Shocks and the Deus Ex's that I'm saving for later, but I've always craved the flavor of things that are outside of my easily-accessible inherited cultural sphere. My JRPG backlog is daunting. But if I was born in Tokyo I'd probably be some unbearable putz raving on and on about how great Planescape: Torment is... need to get around to that one, too. They should drop it on Switch.

[SirSmUgly]

7 minutes ago, John E. Dynamite said:

Maybe, but have you ever emulated Live A Live your freshman year of college?

Bless the System Shocks and the Deus Ex's that I'm saving for later, but I've always craved the flavor of things that are outside of my easily-accessible inherited cultural sphere. My JRPG backlog is as outright daunting. But if I was born in Tokyo I'd probably be some unbearable putz raving on and on about how great Planescape: Torment is... need to get around to that one, too. They should drop it on Switch.

I'm just going to admit that I hate JRPGs almost uniformly. If I were putting together a top-20 list for my favorite RPGs, only one JRPG - Parasite Eve - would be on that list. 

Other than that, I'm not a fan of the aesthetic of the vast number of JRPGs, and if they're traditional turn-based, I'm out immediately. 

I just think that we have different tastes, as I love WRPGs of all types. 

[John E. Dynamite]

I guess my baseline take on WRPGs vs. JRPG gameplay is that most WRPGs seem to be modeled off a Dungeons & Dragons based statistics-and-combat model where JRPGs revolve around the simpler Dragon Quest series, which to me is less obtrusive. But there are few genres less dependent on gameplay, and the most talked-about divide comes down to this Action Movie vs. Anime aesthetic argument that I don't care about that much - truth be told I could take or leave either.  I think the meat of the argument as I see it is in how either genre defines role-playing; is the "role" you're "playing" defined by the player/observer, or defined by the creator? Is it chosen or inherited? Open-world vs. linearity, individualism vs. societal equilibrium, the real East vee West type stuff. I look at my backlog of games like they're a collection of books. I'd rather let the author take me for a ride and experience the story as they want to tell it, instead of approach every game like a unique little world I can run amok in. I totally understand the appeal of the later, I just prefer it a couple of ticks less than my fellow Yanks. But we live in a frankly enlightened age of this Dork Ass Medium of Button Pushing, where Japan loves Skyrim , Persona 5 sells millions of copies in the west and the genres continue to converge into something we'll all be better for (and it'll probably end up looking a lot like Parasite Eve).

[SirSmUgly]

Right, that's exactly it. I take the "RPG" part very seriously and want to imagine my character in my own mindset, playing as I would react to the world around me, rather than playing as a character who already has a given personality. I don't begrudge people who prefer the opposite, though. 

[tbarrie]

5 hours ago, John E. Dynamite said:

I guess my baseline take on WRPGs vs. JRPG gameplay is that most WRPGs seem to be modeled off a Dungeons & Dragons based statistics-and-combat model where JRPGs revolve around the simpler Dragon Quest series, which to me is less obtrusive.

I played Dragon Quest back in the day, and I'd hardly call it simpler than D&D. I'm also pretty surprised to hear such an obscure western game was that influential in Japan. It's barely known in its home country, isn't it? 

5 hours ago, John E. Dynamite said:

I think the meat of the argument as I see it is in how either genre defines role-playing; is the "role" you're "playing" defined by the player/observer, or defined by the creator?

The player. That's the basic definition of a role-playing game. If the creator is trying to define the personality of the character the player is allegedly controlling, the game they're making is not an RPG. Could still be a fine game, of course.

[John E. Dynamite]

9 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

I played Dragon Quest back in the day, and I'd hardly call it simpler than D&D. I'm also pretty surprised to hear such an obscure western game was that influential in Japan. It's barely known in its home country, isn't it? 

The player. That's the basic definition of a role-playing game. If the creator is trying to define the personality of the character the player is allegedly controlling, the game they're making is not an RPG. Could still be a fine game, of course.

What's the obscure Western game we're speaking of? I assume you're not talking about Dragon Quest... unless you're talking about tabletop series DragonQuest, which is why the first Dragon Quest games were called Dragon Warrior in the US.

[tbarrie]

6 hours ago, John E. Dynamite said:

But if I was born in Tokyo I'd probably be some unbearable putz raving on and on about how great Planescape: Torment is...

And you'd be right, of course. There's a reason when I'm singing New Vegas's praises I only go so far as to call it "one of" the greatest CRPGs of all time. It's not as good as Torment.

6 hours ago, John E. Dynamite said:

need to get around to that one, too. They should drop it on Switch.

The Enhanced Edition is on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and even iOS. If you can access the web, you probably have a device that can run Torment.

[tbarrie]

5 hours ago, John E. Dynamite said:

What's the obscure Western game we're speaking of? I assume you're not talking about Dragon Quest... unless you're talking about tabletop series DragonQuest, which is why the first Dragon Quest games were called Dragon Warrior in the US.

I'm talking about the tabletop RPG, yes. Having not played it in twenty or thirty years, I feel I can be forgiven for forgetting whether there was a space in there.:)

[AxB]

7 hours ago, Smelly McUgly said:

 I take the "RPG" part very seriously and want to imagine my character in my own mindset, playing as I would react to the world around me, rather than playing as a character who already has a given personality.

So you don't like role playing games, because you don't play roles. You play as yourself. Self-playing games.

[SirSmUgly]

4 hours ago, AxB said:

So you don't like role playing games, because you don't play roles. You play as yourself. Self-playing games.

Not true! I also play as my wife.

(I like you, but this is a silly distinction.)

[Gonzo]

4 hours ago, AxB said:

So you don't like role playing games, because you don't play roles. You play as yourself. Self-playing games.

He just knows his role.

Dwayne Johnson would be proud.

[tbarrie]

5 hours ago, AxB said:

So you don't like role playing games, because you don't play roles. You play as yourself. Self-playing games.

I can't agree with that. What makes an RPG an RPG in my mind is that the player is making meaningful choices for their character. If the player chooses to play as themselves, well, that's their choice.