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2018-12-12, 11:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Middle of nowhere USA.
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
As someone who's already concious of where my money goes (read as poor, I call myself a bargain bin gamer) nothing in the video was really news to me.
I've had a friend or two recommend 76 to me but they are young'ins with disposable incomes who tend to hop on hype trains a bit much for my taste so I'd taken their recommendation with a big fat grain of salt.
Doom saying aside, I do wonder whether any software will ever be preplaytested and 'finished' to any real standard ever again in this age of constant updates and content additions.
I suspect that even the idea of DLC will blur with that of functional updates given time. That every game will be an 'app game' eventually. But that's just my own doom and gloom speaking.
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2018-12-13, 01:11 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
I've seen some stuff about the engine from elsewhere, and it all seems pretty damning. The engine was fine back in 2002 - in fact, it was impressive. The problem is that it is no longer fit for purpose because the technology has advanced. All Bethesda games have loading screens all over the place because the games weren't designed to handle worlds of the size that has become standard. The cities have to be in their own loading zone because the number of NPCs has grown enough to make the game unstable if they aren't.
The re-use of assets has been noticeable for some time. New Vegas pulled most of its assets from Fallout 3, which already made them look dated as there's a 2 year gap between the games. However, a lot of the clutter and textures dated all the way back to Oblivion. Pulling items from a 4 year old game in a different genre (Fantasy v Sci-Fi) was downright shameful, and they got a lot of scorn for it at the time. Fallout 76 just proves they haven't learned - for every screenshot that looks beautiful, there's a screenshot where I couldn't tell you if it was from 76 or from Fallout 4, because the assets used are the exact same ones. It would not surprise me to learn that some of the clutter is pulled straight from Fallout 3, with a new coat of paint at best.
They need a new engine before going any further, but I see no evidence that they intend on doing so. Fallout 76 is a warning sign, but I suspect they're going to crash and burn sooner or later.
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2018-12-13, 02:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2009
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- Middle-o'-Nowhere, Idaho
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
I disagree. The engine isn't the problem. It's with management that bows to marketing, an apathetic dev team, rushed game releases, and a willingness to ship games with the attitude that they can patch it later.
To paraphrase a video that Gopher put out a few days ago: imagine if Bethesda licensed the engine to Obsidian, and they made a perfect new Fallout game. Imagine a New Vegas sequel with roleplaying, with hours of quests that affect both others' disposition and the world around you, with new factions that are interesting and varied instead of the same rehashed factions shoehorned in to make marketing happy. Would the engine be a problem in that game?I run a Let's Play channel! Check it out!
Currently, we're playing through New Vegas as Gabriel de la Cruz, merchant and mercenary extraordinaire!
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2018-12-13, 02:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
That doesn't make sense. Oblivion in 2006 had instanced cities, but it certainly didn't have as many NPCs in, say, the Imperial City as Vivec in Morrowind did--and Vivec was entirely non-instanced, you could walk anywhere in it without a loading transition. Whatever reason they chose to introduce instanced cities was, it wasn't because of the number of NPCs.
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2018-12-13, 03:01 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
Not that I disagree with you, but the overwhelming majority of the NPCs in Vivec are in interior cells (along with pretty much everything else), and unless you're using a mod that changes things they're also more or less just there - at most patrolling back and forth over some short distance inside the cell. Vivec might not be an instanced city in the way that any of the major cities of Oblivion is, but it's also not that far off from it.
Last edited by Aeson; 2018-12-13 at 03:05 AM.
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2018-12-13, 01:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2018
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2018-12-13, 01:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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2018-12-13, 06:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2013
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- USA
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
A poor craftsman blames his tools sure; but a good craftsman buys the best tools he can get. I worked at a company where management basically refused to spend money on fundamental equipment. We were trying to do scientific research with the equivalent of two rocks and a stick. If Bethseda is going to make games it needs to the tools to do it; part of that is updating the engine.
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2018-12-13, 06:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2007
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- Lemuria
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
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2018-12-13, 06:58 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2006
- Location
- Up there past them trees!
Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
Eh. I'm solidly in the middle of this. The problems with the Creation Engine are not make-believe. Changing to a better engine, like IdTech 6, would likely help a great deal. What no one outside of Bethesda knows is how much work and money that would entail, and what trade-offs would be necessary to accomplish it. Doing such a thing tends to go solidly against the grain of what most business leadership people would be inclined to support. Business stakeholders tend to have a laser-like focus on features, so fundamental design changes and underlying platform innovation tends to suffer in most operations. Would going to IdTech 6 make loading screens go away? Probably. Does that matter for showing a good demo in front of the E3 audience? Not so much.
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2018-12-13, 07:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2013
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- Middle of nowhere USA.
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
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2018-12-13, 07:30 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2016
Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
Are you willing to pay full price $60 plus a season pass for OG Tetris? If the guy that made Tetris spawned 7 other games using the same "engine" as Tetris, each more constantly strained, less stable, and prone to bugs and crashing than the last due to the limitations of the engine having been reached long since, would you consider the smart action to be never to upgrade?
Should we judge new games not based on the market standard of today but by how they compare to Tetris?
Absolutely incorrect to the reality of the industry. For a long time, and still ongoing in some circles, the problem with the ever increasing budget of games that "justified" the increased monetization was that a lot of publishers/developers insisted on reinventing the wheel with every new release; every new game needed its own unique engine. It was a big selling point.
Not making a new engine and abandoning the Creation Engine was NOT a decision of the higher-ups at Zenimax. For most of the Creation Engine's lifespan, the execs WANTED people to waste time making a new engine for no real reason. It was a badge of honor and prestige to create a new engine for every game.
It is clearly a choice by the Bethesda dev and design teams, not Zenimax. For a good while, it was a good move; there was no real reason to change engines between Oblivion and Fallout 3, or arguably even New Vegas.
By the time Skyrim came around though, its limits had been reached. By Fallout 4, the continued use was laughable.Last edited by Rynjin; 2018-12-13 at 07:35 PM.
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2018-12-13, 08:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2006
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
I don't know I'd say that, considering F4's so stupidly stable. But that might be the 64-bit jump. I mean... in all the 553 hours I played I had two crashes that weren't the mods fault.
I am trying out LPing. Check out my channel here: Triaxx2
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2018-12-13, 09:01 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2016
Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
It's the 64 bit jump; Special Edition Skyrim is very stable as well.
The problem is Fallout 4's assets all look and feel wildly outdated. Faces are still atrocious (made all the more noticeable by the better lighting and more expressions they tried to give them), and the number of meaningful features and choices is very low, likely because so much dev time was taken up by the stupid settlement system (whose clunkiness also shows the engine's age. As simple as the system is it should not be as hard to build your settlement neatly and nicely as it was to decorate a room back in Oblivion).
Physics are still wonky, and still lead to the frustrating issues of key items sometimes falling under the map or being shoved under random **** due to an explosion going off in the general vicinity of the room.
Even little things, like the short period of blackness initiated when aiming into a scope, which mods like this fix, add up after a while, and most are symptoms of not using a newer, sleeker engine that doesn't have to use the weird workarounds and jury rigged solutions to common problems that Bethesda games have.
The fact that animals still doofily jump at people to attack, even, would likely not be a thing in a newer engine, because newer engines can handle newer and better animations more easily. as modders can attest, animating **** in the Creation Engine is a big pain in the ass.
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2018-12-13, 10:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2008
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- Orlando, FL
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
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2018-12-13, 11:39 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
I think Fallout 4 was an acceptable use of the Creation engine, back when that game went into development the decision to squeeze out one more game while also working on a new engine that would presumably be deployed in the next Elder Scrolls title made sense. Instead they created Fallout 76, which only functions by eliminating things that strain the engine (like moving NPCs), often in ways that cripple the gameplay (the game has limits on how many objects it can track without crashing, which is largely responsible for the game's inventory horrors).
One would hope that Bethesda is already working on a new engine to handle any future games, but it's hard to be hopeful at this point.
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2018-12-13, 11:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2006
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
I honestly think that's one of the reasons TES6 is so far off, so they have time for an engine revamp. Or new engine.
Then again, as has been pointed out, it'd be hard on mod support going to a totally new engine. Then again if they did as before where they give us their tools, it shouldn't be too bad.I am trying out LPing. Check out my channel here: Triaxx2
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2018-12-14, 04:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
No, it's not: it's their complete lack of any quality control. Things like accidentally releasing the details of many of their users to other users isn't because their game engine is bad, it's because they don't seem to care about testing anything properly before doing it.
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2018-12-14, 05:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2004
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- I wish I knew...
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
In other words: Fixing the engine couldn't hurt, but ultimately isn't the underlying problem.
SpoilerQuite possibly, the best rebuttal I have ever witnessed.
Joker Bard - the DM's solution to the Batman Wizard.
Takahashi no Onisan - The scariest Samurai alive
Incarnum and YOU: a reference guide
Soulmelds, by class and slot: Another Incarnum reference
Multiclassing for Newbies: A reference guide for the rest of us
My homebrew world in progress: Falcora
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2018-12-14, 08:35 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
At least not the largest problem. There's no denying that their engine is garbage though. If some new franchise was putting out games in this engine without 20+ years of nostalgia and a huge gaming company name attached to them they'd go bankrupt after one release.
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2018-12-14, 10:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2005
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- Baator (aka Britain)
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2018-12-14, 11:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2013
Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
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2018-12-14, 01:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2006
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
The main point made about the engine isn't graphics, it is all the bugs and limitations that the engine brings to the game and design. They aren't using the engine because it is great for storytelling or offers unique gameplay options, they're using it so they can reuse as much as possible from the previous games. It would at least be something if using an older, and well known to the developers, engine meant they could release a highly optimized and very well polished game.
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2018-12-14, 02:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2006
- Location
- Up there past them trees!
Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
Well said.
Absolutely incorrect to the reality of the industry. For a long time, and still ongoing in some circles, the problem with the ever increasing budget of games that "justified" the increased monetization was that a lot of publishers/developers insisted on reinventing the wheel with every new release; every new game needed its own unique engine. It was a big selling point.
Not making a new engine and abandoning the Creation Engine was NOT a decision of the higher-ups at Zenimax. For most of the Creation Engine's lifespan, the execs WANTED people to waste time making a new engine for no real reason. It was a badge of honor and prestige to create a new engine for every game.
It is clearly a choice by the Bethesda dev and design teams, not Zenimax. For a good while, it was a good move; there was no real reason to change engines between Oblivion and Fallout 3, or arguably even New Vegas.
By the time Skyrim came around though, its limits had been reached. By Fallout 4, the continued use was laughable.
We clearly have different experiences of the game. My Fallout 4 playthrough, completely vanilla, not one single mod, has had quite a sprinkling of CTD problems.
That's mostly art direction and game design decisions, rather than engine, I fear.
Physics are still wonky, and still lead to the frustrating issues of key items sometimes falling under the map or being shoved under random **** due to an explosion going off in the general vicinity of the room.
Even little things, like the short period of blackness initiated when aiming into a scope, which mods like this fix, add up after a while, and most are symptoms of not using a newer, sleeker engine that doesn't have to use the weird workarounds and jury rigged solutions to common problems that Bethesda games have.
The fact that animals still doofily jump at people to attack, even, would likely not be a thing in a newer engine, because newer engines can handle newer and better animations more easily. as modders can attest, animating **** in the Creation Engine is a big pain in the ass.
Exactly. Bethesda, I feel, has gotten away with lots of buggy games with the understanding that they were playing in a niche no one else occupied, and they supplied the tools for the community to patch their games for them. Viewed cynically, it's a pretty clever notion. However, that approach fell to pieces when they decided to get into a game with other competitors, and in a niche where community mods weren't feasible. Result: Fallout 76 == Dumpster Fire.
There has been some asset re-use between Skyrim and Fallout 4, but it was mostly pretty minimal. I won't deny Fallout 76 is rife with asset re-use, but given its alleged provenance as an aborted coop addon for Fallout 4, that shouldn't be surprising. In that vein, I make out Fallout 76 to have much more in common with Skyrim Special Edition, ie: A cynical attempt to get players to pay twice for the same game.
There's a lot of talk in this thread which seems as though people think that an engine is like a part you can replace, like a new box-spring for your bed. It's really not like that. It's the underlying technological design foundation of your entire game. That's why "new" engines rarely are new. They're just modified over time, like any other piece of software. To illustrate by way of analogy, going from Windows XP to Windows 7 is a modification of the underlying design. Going from Mac OS9 to Mac OSX was a complete change of the fundamental design. When we talk about the change of the Bethesda 3D engine, we should be talking about a complete refactor of the underlying code supporting the game, otherwise the discussion is kind of meaningless.
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2018-12-14, 06:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2006
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
I'm compelled to ask what your specs are.
Also only one was the classic: Ooh, your engine has slipped on a Banana peel and died. The other was a long countdown to 1 FPS then a hard freeze for 5 minutes then death. No idea what happened there.I am trying out LPing. Check out my channel here: Triaxx2
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2018-12-14, 06:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2006
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- Up there past them trees!
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2018-12-14, 07:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2005
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
If given the choice between buying Fallout 76, or getting kicked in the balls 76 times, which horror should I choose?
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2018-12-14, 07:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2006
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
I have an AMD FX-6300, 750Ti, and 16GB of Ram. So that's weird.
I am trying out LPing. Check out my channel here: Triaxx2
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2018-12-14, 07:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2015
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- London, UK
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Re: Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!
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2018-12-14, 08:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2007
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- UTC -6