Fallout 76 / YMMV - TV Tropes

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This work contains the following YMMV tropes:

Alternate Character Interpretation: MODUS is the super computer of the Enclave who slaughtered all the surviving members of the group. Is it as a malevolent AI like John Henry Eden or is it a guy who acted in self-defense against a bunch of Asshole Victim types? The fact it seems to Management operating Whitespring's refugee camp, it may be doing that because it is a Big Good or because it is working a more sinister machination. Also, is it this way because it is functioning as designed or the damage done to it has changed its personality and forced a Heel–Face Turn.
Broken Base:
- Legacies tend to be quite divisive. On the one hand, they're quite popular among the older playerbase who were around when they were a natural part of the game's loot system, who see them as invaluable relics of a time before numerous balance changes restricted their Game-Breaker status. On the other, newer players tend to dislike them for being reflective of the game's wonky balancing on launch that necessitated such changes to begin with, and not helped by how egregious exploits and cheats were prolifically used to obtain them (and the third-party trading of such Legacies that ensued) before Bethesda clamped down on illicit behaviors.
- Plenty of gamers immediately hated removing the single player mode and making the new game multiplayer always online, and they weren't comforted once the game launched and was a buggy mess and its marketing and related products all suffered from the same disorganized, seemingly apathetic attitude that the game's launch state reflected. Other fans were willing to wait and see if Bethesda fixed all the issues and the update that included NPCs and more engaging storylines did win back some of the gamers. Some have said it's closer to the quality of Fallout 4 now that the update has gone through while others continue to consider the game a failure and are waiting to see if Bethesda goes back to the format from Fallout 3 and 4 in a future entry.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: When it comes to C.A.M.P. sites, the most popular areas to set up are the immediate areas surrounding the Whitespring Resort and Watoga after completing the Mayor For A Day quest. Whitespring is popular due to being full of friendly robots who will happily defend you from any enemies that wander too close, the Enclave bunker provides an easy access to various crafting stations and vendors, and as of The Pitt, the Whitespring itself is now full of vendors where you can unload any excess loot. Meanwhile, Watoga, after completing the quest, will also have infinitely respawning friendly robots, and is an ideal place for scavenging supplies.
- What Rads? and Master Infiltrator are among the most popular Legendary Perks due to their sheer utility. What Rads?, even at its lowest level, automatically cures your rads at a steady rate, which not only makes fighting radioactive mutants like Feral Ghouls and Glowing enemies much easier, but also completely removes the downside of consuming pre-war and cooked food and drinks. Meanwhile, Master Infiltrator automatically maxes out your hacking and lockpicking skills, freeing up your perk slots.
Complete Monster: Thomas Eckhart was a member of the Enclave and the Secretary of Agriculture under the Pre-War Government who was obsessed with eradicating Communism not matter the cost. Being the last surviving member of the presidential cabinet, he became the leader of the Enclave forces inside the Whitespring bunker. His first action as leader was to hold a vote on whether or not they should continue the nuclear war against China and then had everyone who voted against him locked inside a room that was flooded with Deadly Gas. In an attempt to have the automated control system of the Appalachia’s nuclear silos raise the DEFCON Level and give him access to nuclear missiles, he unleashed Liberators and Super Mutants onto the survivors on the surface. When this wasn't enough, he also released the Scorchbeasts, which would eventually wipe out most of the remaining human population in the region. Despite being long dead by the time the game takes place, he left behind a region devoid of human life and full of dangerous creatures.
Critical Backlash: Even though the game has considerably improved since its release, some players still hate on it for the broken mess that it originally was. Long-time players (or players who gave the game a second chance) are quick to point out that it's not a terrible game anymore.
Ensemble Dark Horse: The most beloved NPC from the base game is probably Rose the Raider, an adorable Ms. Nanny that has been reprogrammed as The Quincy Punk and having a Bad Butt personality that makes her stand out from so much of the rest of the wilderness.
Epileptic Trees:
- The fan theories started to fly concerning the game based on random leaks, the trailers, and the E3 presentation. What helps is that even after the E3 presentation, almost all information about the game is intentionally vague in order to help stir up interest for its eventual release.
- The focus on "rebuilding America" in all the imagery and trailers have people wondering how the Enclave will factor into things, possibly leading up to a reveal that Vault 76 is related to them. The Enclave does have a presence in the story, but it has nothing to do with the vault.
Franchise Original Sin:
- The previous Fallout games developed and published by Bethesda were criticized for their technical issues and dated visuals stemming from the increasingly aging engine. However, this criticism was overshadowed by praise for their diverse open-worlds, interesting characters, rich quests, and the VATS-system which compensated for the less-than-stellar gunplay. Fallout 76, as a real-time online-only title with no non-player-characters, can't rely on any character-driven quests or storytelling, and the VATS system is neutered to the point of uselessness. The real-time nature also means the clunkiness of the Pip-Boy interface is exacerbated as you can't pause the game while using it. With almost none of the positive aspects that salvaged the previous games, what's left is an unstable, bog-standard survival game with combat and looting. A combination of the removal of the series' signature role-playing coupled with trying to make a multiplayer-game on an engine that can't handle it ^note has proven the breaking-point with fans and critics.
- Bethesda-produced games have always been released in beta with seemingly no prior testing, and have even previously gotten worse through attempts at bug fixing.^note This game finally hit the point where fans of the company were no longer willing to tolerate it, as the always-online multiplayer-only gameplay made fan-patches impossible while opening up new avenues for ways for things to go wrong and need to be patched, and the fact that 76 still includes some bugs from Fallout 4 that were only fixed by fan-patches.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: "Love" might be pretty stretching the term, but the Japanese Fallout fans are tad more forgiving toward Fallout 76's faults and flaws. For instance, this post-launch review and this review of Fallout First is surprisingly pretty optimistic that the game can be better, including the comments.
Genius Bonus: The Scorched Plague: a deadly fungal disease in the Eastern US that's passed on by (mutated) bats to humans? It's a reversed-species take on white-nose syndrome.
Goddamn Bats:
- Wild Ticks. They don't have much health (about as much as a Radroach, even at level 28) and deal as much damage as one but they're incredibly fast, have tiny bodies making them hard to hit and sometimes carry diseases which will more often than not infect you on the very first hit they land on you.
- Mole Miners. They rely on close-quarters fighting as they only carry Shotguns and Gauntlets and are quite slow, but they can take punishment, come in packs of 3 or more, can suddenly pop up from the ground as an ambush, and some might carry Missile Launchers (in which they're really quick to use them, with frightening accuracy to boot). It's incredibly easy to get overwhelmed if you're not careful.
Good Bad Bugs:
- The quest "Feed the People" used to give Meat Stew to every player on the server, even those who didn't participate in it.
- Fusion Cores used to recharge to 100% if you quit the game while in a suit of Power Armor.
- After Patch 5 was released, players quickly discovered that the changes to the disease "Rad Worms" (50% more radiation damage) has a unintended side-effect of also increasing any current buffs by 50% (including mutations), as long as the disease is active. This quickly got patched out when Patch 6 rolled along.
- A Daily quest with Wastelanders has you taking recon photos of Foundation or The Crater for the Overseer's Mr Handy, Davenport. After the photos are taken, you have the option of bringing them to the opposite faction instead to gain bonus reputation and rewards. This naturally locks you out of getting normal rewards from Davenport since you no longer have the photos. However, joining another server will place the photos back into your inventory, allowing for double the amount of rewards you can possibly get from the Daily.
- Before it was discontinued, entering then exiting a Nuclear Winter match then heading back into Adventure mode would cause two sorts of oddities to happen. Nuke Zones would appear far larger than how they actually are and map boundaries were rendered disabled, allowing free exploration of the entire game's out of bounds map, which resulted in lots of Scenery Porn; however, heading too far out of bounds could result in players becoming extremely laggy and eventually disconnecting from the server or even causing a game crash.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- Bethesda Softworks made a video defending singleplayer in response to claims by Electronic Arts executives that most people didn't enjoy singleplayer games anymore. Bethesda Game Studios then later made a multiplayer-only game in their primarily singleplayer franchise. Though some could see this as Hilarious in Hindsight, especially since EA has gone the opposite way by realizing singleplayer-only games still sell, then acting shocked every time they re-realize this every couple of years.
- While the lack of a unified government in the Capital Wasteland circa 2277 was already pretty depressing, it becomes even more so after learning Vault 76 had first tried to rebuild the United States way back in 2102, which heavily implies that the Vault 76 Dwellers' efforts are doomed to failure.
- The state of West Virginia was elated by the attention brought by the game's announcement and thoroughly embraced it as a vehicle for promoting tourism, culminating in the state government defictionalizing the in-universe "Reclamation Day" holiday. The game's lackluster-at-best critical reception and the spate of controversies surrounding it make this enthusiasm somewhat awkward to look back on.
- Vault-Tec's plan to secure the nuclear missile silos for their own use became a lot darker when Fallout (2024) reveals a Vault-Tec Exec nuked Shady Sands.
He's Just Hiding: Fans like to think that the Responders, Free States, and Appalachian Brotherhood of Steel weren't completely wiped out and that some of the members merely fled the territory ahead of the Scorch Beasts. And they would be right, since survivors of many of these factions started cropping up when Wastelanders was released, with most of them having escaped the initial Scorched outbreak by virtue of being outside of Appalachia at the time.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Almost two years before the teaser trailer was released, DeviantArt member LocalSpaghetto drew a picture of Soldier: 76 in a Vault jumpsuit.
- Due to the many similarities between the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises (aside from them sharing the same developer), many fans have jokingly suggested over the years various ways for dragons and other supernatural elements to show up in the Wasteland. This Prequel game introduces to the franchise the "Scorchbeasts," ferocious mutated bats the size of small business jets that can unleash sonic blasts from their mouths. So apparently, dragons have already existed in the Wasteland this entire time!
  - This one got even more hilarious when a programmer on Twitter dug into the game and discovered that the Scorchbeasts' coding was almost entirely recycled from Skyrim's dragons, with most of the files not even being renamed. Dragons were shoehorned into the Fallout universe with the Serial Numbers Filed Off!
- Ever since Fallout Online was shut down by Interplay, rumors about a possible MMO game set in the far future of the Fallout universe have circulated. Lo and behold, Bethesda announced at the E3 2018 Fallout 76, which is a multiplayer RPG taking place before the entire main series.
- The song "Take Me Home, Country Roads" in the game's trailer had been adopted, among others, by the West Virginia University and their sports teams, the West Virginia Mountaineers, who play it during every match. Their colors are old gold and blue, which just so happen to be the same color scheme as Vault-Tec and, by extension, the iconic Vault Suits.
- Prior to the game getting revealed, Pete Hines claimed that the game wasn't an MMO or a Battle Royale. Take a wild guess what mode for 76 was announced at Bethesda's E3 2019 segment.
Mis-blamed: Many of Bethesda's singleplayer-oriented fans have complained that the development time spent of Fallout 76 will further extend the amount of time before the releases of Starfield and the next main entries in The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. While it's true the main team at Bethesda Maryland did work to a not-insignificant degree on Fallout 76 (and even Bethesda Montreal helped to a much lesser extent), the actual game is almost entirely the labor of Bethesda Austin (formerly BattleCry Studios, who make up an entirely separate team from the Maryland and Montreal divisions), meaning that the actual difference in development time is likely far more negligible than first assumed.
Moral Event Horizon: David Thorpe is a Posthumous Character who crosses it in this as he's responsible for destroying the city of Charleston by causing the Christmas Flood. As leader of a gang of Raiders, he and the other survivors at the Top of the World (Snowshoe Mountain) were turned away from Charleston early on due to a lack of supplies. While they killed and stole, not all of them were beyond redemption. However, when his girlfriend, Rosalynn was captured by the Responders, David responded by using a bunch of mini-nukes stolen from the Brotherhood of Steel to destroy the nearby dam in order to kill everyone inside. Ironically, this killed his girlfriend in the process (and may have been the point).
Nausea Fuel: The minor improvements to game details means now monsters can be reduced into a pile of gooey flesh and bones, with flies swarming over it.
Overshadowed by Controversy: And how. All the things described on this page made it so even people who have never played a single Fallout game heard about the disastrous launch and subsequent failures related to it (the Duffle Kerfuffle, the botched Nuka Cola Dark in the cheap plastic shell, the refusal to grant any refunds enough that it garnered them an actual class action lawsuit, and of course there was the game itself being a buggy, tedious bore) and have been enjoying the schadenfreude of everyone demanding that Bethesda do better. Since launch, there was one large update that put the NPCs back into the game, which saved it for the fans still clinging to it hoping for something fun. But that came a while after all the controversies, so it's safe to say it wasn't exactly an Author's Saving Throw for the game either. While the game did see an enormous rise in popularity with the release of the Fallout television series^note, which gave it a huge boost in notoriety and reception, it's safe to say that the catastrophic launch of 76 will never be forgotten.
Porting Disaster: The PC port of the game was considered one of the worst ever released by Bethesda. First, there are the poorly mapped and clunky controls that don't take full advantage of the keyboard and mouse setup. Second, there is lack of basic graphics settings such as FOV sliders and widescreen and 4k support. Finally, there is the poor optimization, which means even the beefiest top of the line gaming computers struggle to run the game at 60 fps. They later added these basic features in, but it still reflects poorly on the company that they weren't present to begin with.
Sequelitis: In what seems to be a trend for Fallout spinoffs, the game is generally considered to be of extremely poor quality and is widely considered the worst game in the series since Bethesda bought the franchise. Dated visuals, a huge amount of bugs, an archaic and aged engine, insipid gameplay design, boring content, poor implementation of online multiplayer and a lack of things Fallout fans actually like (such as detailed lore, fun and interesting quests, meaningful RPG character-building and a rich thematic undertone ripe for analysis and interpretation) all add up to a game that has been savaged by review outlets and fans alike. The result is a game that seemingly pleases no one, except the most die-hard fans of the franchise. It's worth noting that many fans and critics agree that the idea of a multiplayer Fallout game is a great one, but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired.
So Okay, It's Average: What the game becomes since late 2020 when the game finally became stable. Players, long-time and newcomers alike agree that the game is fundamentally flawed in many aspects, yet while it works, it's technically not unplayable and in some places improves upon Fallout 4 (such as little polish in the interface, ability to build almost anywhere, and the world design).
Take That, Scrappy!: The E3 2018 presentation features the player killing another player by the name of "PGarvey," in what's an obvious Take That! towards Preston Garvey from Fallout 4.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- David Thorpe is one of the most well-developed Fallout NPCs with his story as a corporate manager turning to a Raider boss, his romance with his coworker, his Moral Event Horizon at Charleston, and its Replacement Goldfish in Rosie the Ms. Nanny. Yet, by the time you encounter him in-game, he's become a mindless Scorched. Imagine if he was a full-fledged villain like Caesar or the Master. Many fans believe he would have made a much better final boss than the Scorched Queen.
- Elizabeth Taggerdy is a woman with a lengthy character arc as she joins the Brotherhood of Steel via radio for lack of anyone better to join but never quite joins entirely with Roger Maxson's views. She is a Pragmatic Hero who wants to use nukes against the Scorched Queen and The Extremist Was Right. However, she too, is a character we never meet in person.
- President Eckhart is a Psychopathic Man Child who attempts to wipe out Communist China even though it's already been nuked. His insane plans combined with his ruthless childishness meant that he could have been an excellent villain for the players to oppose as well. However, like so many others, he also died before the game began.
- Shannon Rivers and the Order of Mysteries is a Wacky Wayside Tribe of women who have been trained by a famous radio activist into Pulp heroines. Unfortunately, like so much else in Fallout 76, it's ruined by the fact they're all dead by the beginning of the story, preventing the player from interacting with them or even potentially joining them.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: One would naturally expect the post-apocalypse to be a Crapsack World but Fallout 76 takes it to another level. Once you have listened to holotape after holotape of brave, hopeful Responders talking about their new-found hope, purpose and determination only to know that they are all dead, find notes from various survivors planning escapes or discussing their relationships with loved ones, discover that things like the inoculation were literally hours from completion, and know that even the mighty Brotherhood of Steel was obliterated by a Zerg Rush, it starts to become very hard to get worked up about how unrelentingly pointless everything in the game is. Interestingly, around the time the Wastelanders expansion came out, bringing some much needed hope with the NPCs, Bethesda Austin's devs admitted that virtually every content designer on the base game tried to sneak in a single survivor at the end of their quests somewhere to avoid this. Unfortunately, when their quests came up for review the Bosses would see the survivor and veto it, saying they only wanted other players as humans.
Win Back the Crowd: After several major updates, expansions, and an insane amount of bug fixes, many fans of the franchise have begun to warm up to 76 as a genuinely fun, open-ended entry in the series that's incredibly enjoyable with friends. The release of the television series based on the franchise also gave it a massive Newbie Boom, giving the game a boost in public perception among those who'd never played it before or decided to give it another shot. That being said, as you can see by the plethora of problems listed on this page alone, it's not unreasonable for people to still be justifiably weary of 76.

YMMV / Fallout 76

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