f13.net

Fallout 76

Since 76 was one of the control Vaults and not deliberately sabotaged by Vault-Tec, I'm sure everything went fine and we are in for a game of "Utopia Walking Simulator".  :awesome_for_real:

It's multiplayer so I expect it to be a bit of a Overawatch, a bit of a Battle Royale, and a bit of Mario Kart.

I am interested by default, but I am not too hopeful for some reason.

I'm expecting something like this:
(http://www.mobygames.com/images/promo/l/100382-interstate-76-screenshot.png)

Fallout Online. You heard it here first. Dibs on the Super Mutant Class.

Hi. I'm Jason Schreier, from Kotaku. I had forgotten how... passionate the Fallout community can get. After I reported on Fallout 4's existence in 2013, people here first spent two years calling me a liar, and then when it was confirmed, they just yelled at me for "spoiling the surprise." But hey, I'm also a big fan of the series, and in fact may or may not have just started replaying Fallout 4 on my PC in the wake of this week's news.

I've seen a lot of rage and confusion (and denial) on this subreddit so I just wanted to chime in to say a couple of things. One is that, after publishing my story, I heard from a few other sources (in addition to the three mentioned in the article) corroborating that Fallout 76 is an online game. If you're really still in denial, I guess you can wait until June 10, but hey, don't say I didn't tell you.

The second thing is that I'm very optimistic about this game. The buzz I'm hearing (both first- and second-hand) is that it's really cool, interesting, and just as story-focused as any other Bethesda Game Studios game. It might have multiplayer and base-building, but hey, it's still a Fallout game. I don't want to drive hype for a game I haven't seen or played, but I also don't want people to be so closed-minded that they spend the next nine days freaking out every day on Reddit because this game isn't going to be like the last three.

I mean, how many of you remember when hardcore Fallout fans flipped a shit because Bethesda was making a first-person shooter?

I think that in retrospect I shouldn't have tweeted that anyone expecting a traditional single-player Fallout will be "very disappointed" -- really, I should have said that they'll be very surprised. I wanted (and still want) to make sure people's expectations are calibrated accordingly.

Short version: Yes, Fallout 76 is going to be a multiplayer RPG. No, that's not automatically a bad thing. Just like all of you, I'm stoked to see the game on June 10, and I'm optimistic that it's going to be really cool.

(PS - Special shoutout to those of you who AREN'T sending me nasty and antisemitic messages on Twitter!)

It's Bethesda though, they will screw it up.

Eh?  Bethesda has been one of the few game companies I can think of to constantly put out a good product.  What don’t you like?

A week or so ago I actually started up a Fallout 3 game. I'm having so much fun I may go back to Fallout 1 or 2 next.

It sounds pretty much the same as the Conan servers. Which means the Brotherhood of Dong is only five months away.

It seems to me that they are going the Elite Dangerous route. It's a shared universe, but played over many instances. So you can hide from danger or from human interactions when and if you want, but at the same time you are all (kinda) in the same world.

but you can choose to play in your own solo-group server.

"you'll never see a server" and then at the end said "we need to test our dedicated server technology"

Of course I can be wrong but I don't see confusion there, nor is there a contradiction in the above statements. The game will have dedicated servers (technology), they just won't be visible to the players. You don't pick what unnamed instance you are dropped into or phase to/from to play with your friends.

Yeah it's a bit confusing how that's supposed to work.

it's staggeringly stupid to not have them at launch

If you're running open world PvP, like Rust (or even GTA5 online) -- private servers are a frill, probably only even being considered because of the long history of modding Fallout. The fact that you can restrict it to just your friends (and thus avoid PvP) is an incidental use, and you can bet the game isn't constructed around no PvP.

As a PvP and Rust lover, I am sure you are -unfortunately- wrong. When he says "of course you can play solo" there is NO way that can be twisted "you can play solo but with PvP" (what?). So I am willing to bet some money (a little) on the fact that even at launch it will be possible to opt out of PvP completely by playing on a "solo" or "friends only" instance. 100% as in Elite Dangerous.

Rust, Ark, Elite Dangerous -- how well did they sell? (I'm genuinely curious, I have no idea how popular they are).

Rust, Ark, Elite Dangerous -- how well did they sell? (I'm genuinely curious, I have no idea how popular they are).

One of thing that got my attention was Todd Howard stating that they're aware of the possibility of rampant griefing, but they have lots of levers they can pull to tweak that.  Roughly 24:40

It gives internet tards nukes that can destroy your settlement. 

Who would do anything BUT wait for private servers ?

It gives internet tards nukes that can destroy your settlement. 

Who would do anything BUT wait for private servers ?

They are doing you a favor by nuking your settlement. Seriously. That's what the developers effectively said. (It increases rad levels which leads to better drops).

They are doing you a favor by nuking your settlement. Seriously. That's what the developers effectively said. (It increases rad levels which leads to better drops).

So, I mean, there's that. I'm not real interested in this one at all, but that seems to be the selling point for old farts like us.

That's how it is in Conan Exiles with the God Avatars.

I can assure you all this is NOT the game Rust players are waiting for. 24 players per server? It's a JOKE.

No, this might have open PvP, but it is not ever going to be a PvP centric game.

I can assure you all this is NOT the game Rust players are waiting for. 24 players per server? It's a JOKE.

No, this might have open PvP, but it is not ever going to be a PvP centric game.

I played Fallout Shelter.  The loot boxes were not cash grabby -- at all.  Bethesda were VERY up front about the fact that that the boxes had NOTHING in them that couldn't be obtained thru game play.  They were a short cut, not a way around a cockblock, just a way to shorten a game that held my interest for only 8-10 days.

Who the hell paid money for that?

The game they describe makes no sense as a Fallout game, unless the big piece they aren't talking about is monetization.

--Dave

The sheer number of people trying to force this game into something it's not is staggering. People talking about setting up "communities" and "factions" and "settlements".

You're going to log onto a random collection of strangers, plus anyone in your group. Every time the people will be different. Your "settlement" isn't. It's a damn camp, SWG style, which you need to do stuff like craft ammo, rest, recuperate, maintain/repair gear. It travels with you, like...camps in SWG, and frankly probably needs materials to deploy each time because he, need sinks, right?

People talking about shelling out for 200 dollar, collector *pre-orders* for a game that will be 180 degrees away from what they think.

There's gonna be some pissed off people when this launches, and Bethesda could have avoided it by just being up front about what the game is. There'd be pissed off people now, but not pissed off people when it launched. The first affects pre-orders, the second affects all sales.

Xbox Exclusive? Why?

Xbox Exclusive? Why?

Also, I didn't even realize DayZ had gone officially released mainly because I didn't care.

Combined with not being on Steam

... the fuck?

Pizza gets... expensive?

Counter counterpoint: video games are not really any more expensive than they were 15 years ago.  Arguably, they are cheaper.

This is only true if you don't factor in season passes and/or microtransactions.

games don't magically cost $80 now because they milk them

up until DLC, games were $60 and sometimes $70-$100 (when they contained physical crap)

$80 is not the cost of games.

Some of it is just bonkers - Monster Hunter for PS4/PC has something like 51 DLC options to buy. Most of it is emotes and gestures from what I can see. But how and why does anyone think that's okay to charge $5 per item? How do you surface actual content in all of that?

For many games with a multi-player component (a la Destiny and Destiny 2 and The Division) you kind of do need to buy the DLC if you don't want to segregated to the MP kiddie pool.

Ah ok, makes sense. I don't do competitive multiplayer, but pay-to-win is definitely not something you want there.

With Destiny it's not just the gear you're missing out on, it's whole new content; this is exacerbated by the fact that as most people buy the DLC, participating in the old content becomes more difficult since everyone else isn't doing it anymore.

To the original proposition, though...you've identified 2 audiences this /might/ make sense for, DLC-aholics and competitive multiplayers.

Still doesn't mean the casual or even mainstream gamer wants to be stuck paying $80 for a game. Even for things I buy new (for example Far Cry 5), I'd rather wait to see if the DLC is any good before buying (spoilers: it isn't). And the season pass mechanism solves the initial proposition anyway.

So the entire conversation at hand is moot  :why_so_serious:

Mods aren't coming to Fallout 76 at launch, however. Hines cautioned that mods may not be supported in Fallout 76 until November 2019 at the soonest. "It's going to be a lot of work. But mods and private servers are definitely coming," Hines said.

This is getting pretty close to dropping and more info is leaking out from press events.

Big reveal today is that mods will not be allowed on public servers and private servers are as far as a year away (Nov 2019)

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-76-how-mods-and-private-servers-work-and-w/1100-6462371/ (https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-76-how-mods-and-private-servers-work-and-w/1100-6462371/)

When you die you can choose from a couple of actions, such as to respawn for revenge, respawn and ignore, and one other option (I think).

Bounty coming from the wallet of the player?  What happens if the player can't cover it?

Clearly they have not done the slightest bit of research on MMOs.  At all.

Having a mule account to support a red account is damn near a requirement.

But this isn't an MMO, this is some sort of small-server Rust/Ark thing right?

Also I love how antiquated their "anti-griefing" system sounds. Noob player is shooting monster; Dickhead player runs through the bullet hail, taking minimal damage because he is not flagged. Dickhead player uses the maximum cooldown time to move to an appropriate distance, then murders Noob player with little consequence since Noob player technically shot first. :uhrr: :why_so_serious:

Pacifist Mode means you can't damage other players (e.g. so you don't flagged as PvP accidentally). You still will take damage from other people attacking you, though at a reduced level.

https://twitter.com/DCDeacon/status/1045418837171216384

Regardless, with only 24 players on a server I'm not worried it'll be a full on UO-style grief-fest. One common complaint I've heard is PVP is almost totally pointless because you don't get much out of it.

Bounty coming from the wallet of the player?  What happens if the player can't cover it?

Clearly they have not done the slightest bit of research on MMOs.  At all.

Having a mule account to support a red account is damn near a requirement.

It sounds like there will be a group here that will play once there are private servers like how we have an f13 PvE Conan server.

The game itself sounds kind of meh so far. MP, minus the PvP stuff, doesn't seem to add that much to the game, and doesn't offset taking out all the NPCs.

IGN preview of the preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87wo38fRAnY&t=68s

What I want is a"Fallout Online" MMORPG... :oh_i_see:

Parts of it look okay, none of it looks amazing. I'm going to bet waiting a year for the game to add content and stabilize will be well worth it. Added bonus would be buying later at a discount, too.

I'll play it at some point solo or with friends I know, but not at launch.

I preordered all the fallouts, and didn't regret it. This one I'm holding off on until more good info comes out. All the previews seem to be fluff.

I got the bad vibes from the initial unveiling. Big Q&A, lovely video, and....a weird dislike of answering questions about mechanics. A whole bunch of simple, obvious questions -- ranging from "How do you handle PvP? Is it opt-out, opt-in, full PvP, what?" and "Is there questing? How does that work?" and it got evasive answers. And that went on for at least a week or two.

Evading questions generally means you don't think people will like the answers.

To be fair back then they evading answering cause they themselves didn't know the answers -- i.e. they hadn't figured out those details yet.

https://twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/status/1054475944101138443

Bethsoft preemptively saying Fallout 76 is garbage is truly the 2018 we deserve.

'Thanks for preordering this dumpster fire' is definitely a unique approach to marketing.

Everybody who preordered it ought to be punched in the face for encouraging their idiocy anyway. The only thing this game does is take away developing resources from games people actually want to play.

This.  And before anyone jumps in and says something about it being different teams or studios or whatever, don't bother.  A company can only make so many investments and/or strategic choices with its brand and resources.

We could be getting the next Skyrim instead of this bullcrap.

Bethesda excels at making games I can get utterly lost in.  Why on earth would I want other people there?

Glad I have a VR, as it means I can still get hundreds of hours out of my existing Bethesda shit instead of this shit.

I'm jumping in to tell you how wrong you are, even with your disclaimer that doesn't make any sense. This is a purchased studio without the chops to make Skyrim. Apparently this studio was tasked with shoving a multiplayer mod into fallout 4 and crafting a new world. While the former is likely incredibly hard, the latter seems to show you wouldn't want them on one of their marquee games.

I gotta agree with Riggswolfe above. Forbes is apparently not the place to go for good gaming reviews.

My wife's stream team pre-ordered this for her and she tried to get in tonight. What... a... shitshow. Her machine is in the acceptable specs but it doesn't matter. No matter how low she sets the video, it runs like ass - a gorgeous slideshow. She hasn't even made it out of the vault yet. It has deleted itself and require a redownload 3 times already.

it's a tech abortion

also it offers me literally nothing any other fallout game doesn't already do better? You know, with a bad narrative and without other people?

The chances of you running into another human is already low without organization. The odds of them killing you or trying to is even lower.

Game is grade a garbage without private servers

My wife's stream team pre-ordered this for her and she tried to get in tonight. What... a... shitshow. Her machine is in the acceptable specs but it doesn't matter. No matter how low she sets the video, it runs like ass - a gorgeous slideshow. She hasn't even made it out of the vault yet. It has deleted itself and require a redownload 3 times already.

Actual gameplay footage yall

(https://media.giphy.com/media/QLyhWVTvAHbAbAdWcp/giphy.gif)

this game is not bad. Maybe not too exciting and feeling like it's missing stuff that will 'eventually' come, but even now it's not bad at all.

That is my impression: Fallout 4 with a not necessarily less content (map is huge and dense with content) but less life and charm. Yes, randos running by, but there are so few in such a large space that they barely matter and meeting one from time to time is almost cool. On top of that, building is fun.

I personally feel compelled to explore the whole map and content at least once as if it were a single player, and I am pretty sure that my interest will fade after that. They mentioned a lot of stuff coming in the future and I wouldn't be surprised if this turned really good in a year or so (even Conan was hard to swallow at launch), but not holding my breath. If it improves great, otherwise it just feels like a big but weird Fallout 4 expansion. Nothing too wrong with that. Good for two-three weeks of entertainment.

I'm assuming the base building in 76 plays similar to other survival games? Grind resources for hours to build a box you can sleep and store more resources in? I find that tends to be fun for a short term, but always burn out on it.

My biggest gripe with this game: forced depth of field. While I like how thia game looks, I can't get used to the blurry feeling of everything more than 10 yards away. I keep trying to fix my monitor or my glasses only to remember that it's just a fucked up design decision.

For PC players you can adjust/turn off some of that stuff:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/9wrx8g/how_to_turn_off_depth_of_field_distant_textures/

Also the game is already on sale for 33% off ($40) :awesome_for_real:

For PC players you can adjust/turn off some of that stuff:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/9wrx8g/how_to_turn_off_depth_of_field_distant_textures/

Also the game is already on sale for 33% off ($40) :awesome_for_real:

Watched a 15 minute video of a bunch of people killing top-tier scorch dragons or whatever.

Looked boring as all hell, and trivial to boot. Why do people like this again?

I'm beginning to wonder if the AAA-making studios are mostly just thinking that the labor inputs of making a great big game that people play for years don't match the profit margins, and that it's better to find something cheaper and quicker to develop.

Yes that was my impression. In Fallout 76 you can already build way more than you could in vanilla Fallout 4. Not necessarily the biggest achievement, but that's the part I was missing. You can tell building is a big part of 76 so it's the one aspect I don't doubt it'll grow to modded F4 levels and beyond.

When the beta ends I mean  :why_so_serious:

Because beautiful world with great atmosphere to explore, possibly with friends. That's it. This could be good and much better in one or two years. Right now, it's only for those who enjoy walking simulators and the likes. Being a Dear Esther, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Gone Home fan myself I do enjoy this. But yeah, such a wasted opportunity at the moment.

Edit: I, too, reinstalled Fallout 4 after playing around with 76 a bit.

Why do you go back to PvP? There's basically no PvP at all in Fallout 76, that has been known for months.

A huge map would make sense with private servers and building permanence; players could erect their own structures, small groups could come together to form towns, and so on. That doesn't work as well with a portable camp and random servers.

Reddit user scubasme is one customer unable to get a refund, and reports that Bethesda denied their request with the following statement: “Customers who have downloaded the game are not eligible for a refund. We apologize for the inconvenience. If there is anything else we can assist you with please reply to this email for further assistance. Thank you for your patience.”

That cannot be a last minute change -- did they simply not test their server capacity and have to cut from 200 players down to 24, and remove all permanence like four months ago?

Also, there's literally nothing else but PvP. Or would be, if  that even worked right. There's some lackluster PvE, a smattering of "quests", and...that's it.

(https://i.imgur.com/HGCSP20.png)

Bethesda Support
‏Verified account @BethesdaSupport

We are finalizing manufacturing plans for replacement canvas bags for the Fallout 76: Power Armor Edition. If you purchased the CE, please visit https://beth.games/2QDropM  and submit a ticket by Jan. 31, 2019. We’ll arrange to send you a replacement as soon as the bags are ready.

When I saw that canvas bag news later in the day, I assumed it was to try and hide the other news from this morning:

(https://i.imgur.com/0Br4ipV.jpg)

In what may very well be the most bizarre and unsettling twist in the ongoing saga that is Fallout 76, players reported Wednesday that they inadvertently gained access to the support tickets of fellow Fallout 76 players.

Witcher and Bethesda games aren't even from the same planet. They're doing completely different things.

I did my best but never managed to enjoy the combat mechanics in any of the Witcher games including Witcher 3. Give me a Bethesda game any day.

Witcher is more tightly scripted, but they're still open world games.  You need to have the illusion of your actions affecting the world, and Bethesda fails miserably at that.  Case in point, if I'm the grand high muckity muck of the mages guild, head of the thieves guild, head of the dark brotherhood, and also the one and only messianic dragonborn, does that go remarked upon at all when I join the fighters guild?  Nope, you're basically the anonymous fuck stick who needs to go light the forge for old werewolf man.

Hiring decent writers would be a start.

Bethesda peaked with Daggerfall.

After Witcher 3 it became obvious to me that Bethesda has pretty much hit the bottom of the well and their formula is a dead end.  Once you have something like that to measure it against, Bethesda games look really fucking stale.

I don't know whether to put Blizzard or Bethesda at the top of my AAA death pool.

... left with Obsidian and CD Project Red as my only hopes for Western RPGs.

Blizzard will die a slow death over the years since they have so many properties that continue to bring in money currently. They launch new products so slowly that the only damaged one is just Diablo at this point because of their latest stunt.

Obsidian has been bought (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=19896.msg1507533#msg1507533) by Microsoft.

HotS has always struggled and Blizzard copped a backlash from those that enjoyed it when they pulled support for tournaments, SC2 is in maintenance with no future outlined, WoW's xpac was another terribad release. That leaves Hearthstone and Overwatch and HS is on mobile.

Blizzard is not the Blizzard of old.

I am looking forward to Warcraft 3 remastered - I hope they just update it and not mess with it too much

Blizzard never really did innovation.  They took innovation from elsewhere, built games around those innovations, and polished those games until they were great experiences.

Now Blizzard is being run by accountants.  That never works out well in the long run.

Prediction- they will be dead within 4 years. Maybe 5.

The Outer Worlds is a Take-Two published (via Private Division) game -- not Microsoft.

What Blizzard has is nostalgia and a hell of a lot of product forgiveness. If any other company had released Diablo III it would have been laughed off the store shelves and would have sunk without a ripple, but blizzard is allowed a 5th chance to get it right.

This is just absolutely wrong. If anyone else released Diablo 3 they'd all be very rich. Also, we'd all be looking at Blizzard like "Well, comeon assholes." Just like we are now.

Edit: However, had anyone else released Fallout 76:
(https://i.imgur.com/NO7a4y8.png)

DIII is not the whole ARPG market, and ARPGS have sunk without a ripple. Victor Vran, anyone?

D3 was broken at launch, due to the way loot worked and the existence of the AH. It's a much better game now, but without the Blizzard name I doubt it would have made enough money to turn itself around.

We’re waiting for Lost Ark.

D3 was fucking retarded at launch. It punished you hard for playing with other people. It had really crippling network problems which weren't as bad as poe back then with their fucking rollback bs but was still bad. Honestly I never even recovered and got into D3 so I can barely remember all the ways it sucked but I'm damn sure it did. I was so excited for that game, probably the last massive I didn't see this coming gutpunch I've ever gotten in gaming. Now I just expect everything to be complete shit.

I still want a crack at that Korean ARPG.  It looks awesome.

One of the key mechanics in Fallout 76 -- specifically, its multiplayer mode -- is the ability to launch nuclear weapons. Doing this requires that players find (and decrypt) pieces of launch codes. Once they have all the pieces, they input a code into a terminal located inside one of the game's three nuclear silos. On January 1, this entire system died. Players wanting to access the silos found the doors locked shut (and on a timer lasting 9,999 hours), while the enemy ghouls who have to be killed and looted in order to obtain pieces of the codes flat-out disappeared from the map.

Players were left wandering a wasteland of confusion. What was going on? Was this a new storyline? Did Bethesda remember that the Fallout series was supposed to be about how nuclear weapons are a bad thing? And then it turned out that no, it was a bug caused by a bad piece of programming which broke when the real-life date changed from 2018 to 2019. Bethesda was soon on the case and launched (although not from a silo) a hotfix that took care of the issue. Or at least, it took care of it for now. It's hard to say for certain, considering that it only seems to manifest itself on New Year's Day. (On the upside, if it happens again, we can just rerun this article with the dates slightly changed.)

$13/month or $100/year. Up to 8 players. Only one player needs the membership. And because it’s Bethesda they can’t even make it properly persistent (available 24/7) since if everybody leaves the game only the owner can start the world back up apparently.

Private servers are here!...for a price! :awesome_for_real:

https://fallout.bethesda.net/en/article/3r1YDnDtyO1CtNFbJX6RBJ/fallout-76-fallout-1st-announce

$13/month or $100/year. Up to 8 players. Only one player needs the membership. And because it’s Bethesda they can’t even make it properly persistent (available 24/7) since if everybody leaves the game only the owner can start the world back up apparently.

Edit: typo

Except only the owner can unlock the door to let people in and the door automatically locks behind the last person leaving.

It's worse than that. If the owner leaves the server only stays up if another player on it is also paying the $15/month. If no one is the server dies when the owner logs off. Or their game crashes. Or their internet hiccups. Or...

Well, you get the idea. Ark and Conan showed how to do them right. Bethesda showed how to do it wrong.

It's worse than that. If the owner leaves the server only stays up if another player on it is also paying the $15/month. If no one is the server dies when the owner logs off. Or their game crashes. Or their internet hiccups. Or...

Well, you get the idea. Ark and Conan showed how to do them right. Bethesda showed how to do it wrong.

Oh shit they change the text on that page. It didn’t originally say there had to be at least one member on for the server to stay up.

Yeah and according to Juicehead (he's a Youtuber who covers a lot of Fallout stuff) if the owner leaves and it stays up because a subscriber is there it's in a sort of limbo state. No one new can join the server including the owner!

This reminds me that I want to go back to Conan a little.

There are a few issues cropping up here. Fallout 1st players are finding that a “newly created” world they might be heading into is not actually new at all. Players are reporting dead NPCs and looted areas when they get there, implying that these are not actually new instances, but instead re-used old instances masquerading as brand new private worlds.

Multiple players are reporting that they have deposited hundreds of units of scrap in these new boxes, only to find that the box has eaten it. The scrap disappears from the instance, and can’t be found again from re-logging or anything. It’s just gone. Players are not amused at the fact that they have now paid for the privilege of losing all of their materials, and so far, there does not seem to be any way to recover any of this.

C.A.M.P.:

Issue: Placing the "Pop Up" Tent that is part of Fallout 1st causing a CTD. (Ticket Submitted on 10/23/2019)

Multiple reports by reliable sources placing the Tent / Secondard C.A.M.P. Immediately caused a CTD.

This of course results in everyone being booted shortly after if the person who crashed was also the Private Server host.

As for 76, this seems like something that you have to try to do rather than accidentally set up something like this. Considering how online services in general work, and games more specifically, I feel like someone wanted to configure it so that the server would intentionally spin down while the customers are paying a constant fee in order for the game runners to make more cash. Since, of course, they won't have to pay for the running servers 24/7.

They are REALLY bad at this online stuff. They should quit that and concentrate on their core strengths again.

I have to say - and this is probably the only place online I can say this without getting dogpiled - but anyone who ponied up for that subscription service not only should have known it would be fucked on release, but they actively deserve the clusterfuck that they paid for. Being a party to this bullshit is only actively working toward making games as a whole worse.

Beth can go eat a bag of dicks alongside EA, Ubi and Blactivision.

I don't think that people who voluntarily paid money to Bethesda for a subscription to Fallout:76 have the ability to think and speak coherently.

I can't imagine that there's a community out there that would disagree with you.  Anyone that's been even remotely awake has to be at least somewhat aware of the cavalcade of fuckery that this game has been from day one.  It's like they're shooting for some sort of Guinness record.

Maybe reboot is the wrong word, but adding in NPCs, better quest structures, etc.  Smells to me like they are trying to make it less like what they started with and more like a traditional online game.

You would think with 15 months of patches it would be pretty solid now, but I still hear regular news of whatever latest disaster the game is going through.  As interesting as the Wastelanders update makes it look, its pretty easy to remind myself it will still be a poorly monetized broken mess.