Please help me understand this Bethesda thing

[RaptureReady]

I would like to post what i think is happening and for my own sanity would like someone to tell me my thoughts are wrong and set it straight.
I am not a fallout 76 player. I didnt buy the game or will buy the game. I have however been following the shit-storm Bethesda created surrounding this game.
Recently Bethesda announced what I feel to be another attempt at getting people to buy this game but wrapping it up in somewhat of what could seem like an apology or "hey we are pretending to feel bad about everything that has happened with this game so heres a gift for you". Bethesda is giving away Fallout 1, fallout 2, and tactics to everyone!!! Yes! 3 free games to all gamers!!!!!! OH wait. Just for people who purchased or will purchase fallout 76.
I want to make one thing clear, I am not saying they should be giving away the GOTY edition fallout 4.
I also realize this may come off as sounding "wow people will complain about anything. They give away free games and no ones still happy." Im not trying to make that the point.
There is a lot of negative backlash attached to this game. I dont think offering 3 free PC only games to 2/3 of the fallout 76 playerbase comes off as anything but a ploy to get people to buy your failed game.
Gamers who are playing on console would be playing on pc if they wanted to play on PC. Offering pc only games for free is a slap in the face to 2/3 of your playerbase.
They are offering 3 of their oldest fallout games at that. Lets dig through the attic and basement and "wow i aint seen these in ages, go ahead and just give these away". Im sure Todd Howard is actually sitting there thinking that people cant wait to leave work to get home and play that classic fallout 1. Who needs fallout 3 or new vegas. We got fallout tactics.
Scarcasm aside, im sure there are still gamers who enjoy those classics. The point I'm making is I see it more as those older games where you play it for an hr cause its nostalgic then it goes right back where it was in the attic. I just dont see alot of of these younger gamers enjoying any of these 3 games and thats if they even want to play PC to load them up.
They dont need to give away a Skyrim game of the year deluxe rebooted VR edition or Fallout 4 but they could give away fallout 3 which at least looks like something from this generation and that game IS on console and PC.
This reminds me similiar to there 5$ atoms giveaway. This bundle of games is worth 5$ (at least with the seasonal special there running on steam right now). The collectors edition bags couldnt have been worth more than 5$. Todd Howards PR skills came from a 5$ education. Im seeing a pattern.
So anyway, this is what im seeing at the moment. Another half-ass apology, a good idea not executed properly, and another reason gamers need to stop buying games within a few months of there launch!

Im sure alot of you disagree with me on this and I would love to read what you think. This is all my opinion and I am not ashamed of being wrong or having my mind changed.

[GermanCrayon664]

I saw a theory video about Bethesda purposely making 76 a disappointment so Todd can get to work on the games he wants to make but the only person that knows the truth is him

[R.U.S.E]

So many good companies falling apart. This is why I wanna work for myself. I don't wanna rely on some guy who has other things in mind besides the good of the company and those working for it.

[JonnyMorris]

There is perhaps one way that the whole 'three free really old games' thing could have been handled much better - and it's something that I'm sure Bethesda could easily have afforded to do - farm out development of those three old Fallout titles to a reputable company to port them to modern consoles (i.e. PS4 / XBox One), that way everyone can enjoy these titles at their leisure; what's more, once these titles have been ported they can go on general sale too so that those who did not purchase Fallout 76 can still enjoy 'real' Fallout without any reliance on them owning a PC or XBox. The price for each needs to be low, like less than a tenner each, probably more like a fiver, this is part of the penance for messing up so much and the good will to the gaming community - they're unlikely to recoup the cost of the port to consoles but the cash grab from Fallout 76 should easily have covered it already. Generally I think all they would need to do is license some sort of PC / PS2 emulator (Tactics was available on PS2 as I recall) and bolt that onto the game launcher, should be pretty easy really for a competent dev studio to pull off, especially for the age of the games and considering the current trend for retro games.

But we're talking about head-in-the-sand Bethesda here, the obvious is just never obvious enough for them; they could have struck a deal with all those brilliant modders to license their mods into the Special Edition and add the bug fixes to the game engine into the next games that used it, but for whatever reason they just never did this (strangely, it looks like they just went ahead and used some of the mods in the PS3 version of Oblivion as it looks exactly like the PC version with things like the water mod applied, no mention of the mods anywhere though). It's the many things like this just getting worse over the years and wearing down the fan's resolve to be generous towards the company that has now culminated in a massive explosion of bad sentiment, well deserved and not before time.

As a friend of mine pointed out, we would not stand for this kind of thing in almost any other industry - if there's a fault with an electrical product we'll just return it and demand our money back, go to a consumer watchdog or whatever, but sadly with big games like Oblivion there just isn't another company making a product that does almost exactly the same thing like there is for a toaster, so we're sort of stuck with it - play it or don't - and I think that's the only reason why so many people keep buying these games (in the knowledge that modders can finish the job that Bethesda couldn't be bothered to). If Fallout 76 had not been locked down to modders then the backlash wouldn't have been quite so bad, many game-breaking bugs would have been fixed within a few days of release (during the paid 'beta') and then at least the player base would have been relatively happy, the merchandise debacles would have received slightly less attention.

The games industry is turning itself upside down - with one or two exceptions (Rockstar) it's the small dev studios who are doing it right, the big studios have gone SJW or whatever and are driving themselves to bankruptcy through decisions nobody understands. Maybe it is time for those giants to either get it right or just go away, we'll go back to genuinely intriguing and fun games regardless of how low budget they may be.

[fenrif]

I feel like I could sit here all night remembering all the shadey as fuck things Bethesda has done over the years. One of my favorites is that their engine had a memory leak issue for years. PC players would just patch it out with the unofficial patch. But when they released Oblivion on PS3 it was a huge issue. Could really fuck up your game. Bethesda never patched it. Then Skyrim came out on PC with the same memory leak issue. Again; PC players had an unofficial patch. Again; console gamers had the same memory leak issue at launch and never received a patch.

I think they finally fixed it in the special edition, though legends say it was accidentally fixed in an aborted attempt to code the "impossible" feat of working ladders into the engine.

[Hellnium]

What they owe people is a bug free game more than anything. I get that for most folks Fallout 76 isn't going to scratch their itch, but I do have a few friends that like it enough to wait for some of the issues to be worked out. Hopefully it will get to a point where it's playable for them and they get their moneys worth.

In the end it seems that the Todd Howard version of Bethesda is more focused on making money than creating a good experience for their player base. Can't see how this will get better until they go back to basics.

[twidget]

You're reading it right.

Bethseda's games have been bug ridden messes since I first played Morrowind.
It had the Morrowind Code Patch, the Morrowind Patch Project and other endeavors to fix that games bugs.

There have been unofficial patches for each Fallout.
Where are the official patches?

Bugs from the original Skyrim weren't patched and reappeared in later version of the game.
The same goes for FO4 bugs in FO76.

Bethesda is a bunch of lazy fucks.
Is it too much work to get a modern engine going forward?
They've been living on the reputation their games got after modders fixed the bad scripting, added a decent UI, made textures that didn't look like ass and a myriad of other improvements and/or fixes.
Go to the Nexus and look at the Top files for Skyrim and FO4.
The unofficial patch is #2 and #1 respectively (Thank Caliente for that #2 spot. ).
Modders made them and modders made the simplified crap Bethesda was shoveling not just playable but enjoyable.

I don't think of Skyrim or FO4 as RPGs.
More like action/adventure games with some RPG elements.
Use an alternate start mod to not worry about the rails the MQ would have you on, others mods to suit your play style and it's not a bad experience.

FO76 highlighted all Bethesda's shortcomings from the game's code, lies from marketing, customer non-service.
It was the perfect storm of ineptitude by Bethesda, focusing attention on all their previous crap.

I'll close with a Howard Beale quote from the great movie Network.

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

[fenrif]

Ah, I see. So are you saying they always deserved this reputation? Or am I reading this wrong.

I think so. Most of the problems that are coming up from Fallout 76 have existed in their previous games. They've just been incrementally getting more lazy and greedy with each game. I think Fallout 76 is just the one step too far.

[R.U.S.E]

Bethesda was regarded as the best company in the same way Justin Beiber is regarded as the best musician.

Ah, I see. So are you saying they always deserved this reputation? Or am I reading this wrong.

[fenrif]

To be honest I have not really played Fallout (maybe new vegas once at a friends). But wasn't Bethesda reguarded as one of the best companies out there before 76 hit? What I wanna know is what changed during the development of this game to have their rep take a 180 like this? Yea I get the game is bad. But they keep making it worse trying to do damage control, Fallout 4 had a bad reception but it seems to be a decent game at it's core (just not a true Fallout game) from what I understand. Yet they didn't pull these kinds of stunts when 4 started taking heat.

So what changed?

Bethesda was regarded as the best company in the same way Justin Beiber is regarded as the best musician.

[Wild Hunt]

sadly i think bethesda is only going to get worse. they were one of the last developer who just wanted to make games for their fans. now they just see us as dollar signs no longer caring about a good gaming experience and using misleading microtransactions to get more money from us. now there just on more developer to become controlled by greed.

[Omegapyrate]

Might as well weigh in on this....
I've said this before in YT comments, but the only way Bethesda could unfuck themselves right now is to do what Square-Enix did with FFXIV- stop selling it, remake it into something GOOD, then re-release it and give existing customers a free upgrade. That's how consumers trust is regained, and that's exactly what Bethesda fucking needs for their future to not suck.
I'm not going to defend them over this game and the series of fuckups surrounding it..... but what really twists the knife for me in all this (as a longtime fan of theirs) is that all it took to mess up Bethesda's good name was one crappy game that caused it all.

[Mental Midget]

I actually liked Fallout 4 (about 2500 hours on it) or at least it had alot of addictive gameplay elements. And i like many others were very hyped for Fallout 76 up until Bethesdas E3.. Due to the sloppiness/laziness with the development of this this game, its clearly just a cashgrab, to fund Starfield or Elder Scrolls 6.

The funny thing is that ideas for Fallout 4 to have multiplayer was tossed around in the works around 2015 but deemed to be "To distracting" according to Todd Howard around E3 2015.
Also they i have a very faint memory that they also declined/removed a Fallout 4 multiplayer mod that someone made like 1-2 years ago (same as they did with Skyrim a few years back due to it might be conflicting with ESO i guess).

Fallout 76 is nothing else but a big distraction itself. And if Fallout 76 was a proper playable game the community would not get annoyed about stuff like Ripped scripts, doxxing, the canvas bag, The Rum and much more controversy that has befallen Bethesda after Failout 76 its going to take more than a couple of free games that most hardcore fallout fans already owns to satisfy the community and end the Witch hunt on Bethesda.

The sad part about all this that this will HIGHLY affect the launch and credibility that the fans have on Bethesda when releasing Starfield and Elder scrolls VI. They will have to delay these games for soooo long to make up for the wildfire around Failout 76 and make sure the game runs so smoothly and 99.9% bugfree or the wildfire will spread even to those games..

[R.U.S.E]

To be honest I have not really played Fallout (maybe new vegas once at a friends). But wasn't Bethesda reguarded as one of the best companies out there before 76 hit? What I wanna know is what changed during the development of this game to have their rep take a 180 like this? Yea I get the game is bad. But they keep making it worse trying to do damage control, Fallout 4 had a bad reception but it seems to be a decent game at it's core (just not a true Fallout game) from what I understand. Yet they didn't pull these kinds of stunts when 4 started taking heat.

So what changed?

[fenrif]

It's easy to understand what's going on. Bethesda are greedy and lazy. For many years their fanbase has accepted them gradually becoming more greezy and lazy with each release. Finally people have had enough and are fed up with this trend. Bethesda, however, now only know how to be greedy and lazy. So their response is more of the same.

I kind of feel a bit sorry for them. It's like if you have a dog, and for ten years you let it sleep on the bed, then one day you just start screaming at it every time it gets up on the bed. It's not the dogs fault. Todd Howard doesn't know lying about his games is bad. Bethesda doesn't know half assing their development is bad, removing features is bad, and predatory pricing measures are bad. Their fanbase has been defending this stuff to the hilt for longer than I can remember. I can just imagine in the Bethesda offices "They are upset we're using the same engine?! What? Why didn't they complain about this 3 games ago when it became an obvious issue?!"