Well, that's debatable. I'm a lifetime member but a lot of times I don't sign in and when d/l very small files it's okay but anything bigger than a couple of meg,I have to sign in.

The premium part is pay for, otherwise your capped at 1mbs download, which is a bit naff, but still free. Steam workshop and creators club are however drm’d.

i have no opinion

or is that an opinion

That's subjective...

Bethesda is just asking for bad PR at this point.

At this point, I think you'd either have to be a massive optimist or a massive masochist to buy into anything Fallout 76 related.

On one hand, you have people saying that ESO was bad at launch too, give it time, but on the other, every decision that's been made in regards to 76 has lacked awareness about what people are actually disliking about the game to begin with. Buggy glitchy mess? HERE, HAVE A BATTLE ROYALE MODE! Screw up your accounts and cause security issues? NPCS, GUYS! YOU WANTED THAT, RIGHT?

Main issue is that this game was a redheaded stepchild that no one actually wanted.

New Bethesda makes games on the cheap, I know some people will disagree with this but it's a fact. You might say "But Skyrim is a high-budget AAA game", but look at the actual game, the graphics at release while decent were still well behind other AAA games, the game reuses textures and voice-acting out the ass, and the game has no expensive cinematics. If I were to estimate Skyrim was probably made for under 10 million USD. Modern Bethesda games are cheap but made to give the illusion of being AAA, it's a shame that it took Fallout 76 for people to realize this.

Also their CS/etc is BANNING people left and right for helping find and test exploits and bugs....YongYea has done a few videos on the matter.

85 million USD (including marketing, but excluding manufacure).
(sauce)

Looking at that list....damn, companies really need to spend as much or MORE than a game's dev costs just for marketing? That is so bloody stupid(imo).

I mean look at Modern Warfare 2.......4 times the marketing budget as it cost to make. o.0

If you had to pay it wouldn't be popular. Much like ModDB, there are free account options.

A team sent at the beginning to take on a dragon was 5 solders and a dragonborn, beat the final big bad and it's the dragonborn and 3 heroes...

Yep, no real cinematic. Reusing a good number of voice actors is one thing, but they could have used another 10 or so to help vary things up. Not the blatantly 'it's the same guard in every town telling me he's got his eyes on me'.

Kinda miss the Bayonetta cinema where it's a combination of still frames that's engine generated (since your current outfit was what you last had on) along with cutscenes that while fixed looked good and made sense overall.

Bethesda wants to do TES blades to everything. Everything always online, everything microtransactions, everything low quality because 'the hardware on the phone can't handle it so we don't have to put the effort in'. Curious Blizzard and Diablo Immortal got a huge enough backlash temporarily...

But i agree. Bethesda is incredibly cheap, especially now with 76. And i think 76 is the slap to the face for everyone enough that Bethesda can't take back as they keep digging a deeper hole for short term profits.

Just watched a video on TES Blades. Wow. Just looks like a Skyrim asset flip. Yes, it's mobile, but alongside Fallout 76, IMO it seems to crystallize the current Bethesda mission...

... cheap games...

... re-used assets...

... micro-transactions...

... locked / paid modding...

... no quality testing...

if bethesda dnt improve there just gonna go bankrupt, cos evn loyal fans are getting shitted on so why would anyone wanna buy bethesda games anymore, last decent fallout was new vegas its been downbhill after that, and even skyrim the game people loved was outdated on release compared to other RPG games of that time period.

but there will always be a few corporate white knights of these game companys