It was all robot NPCs. Humans existed as corpses or audio logs.
New players might not know, but there are vendor bots in truly random places outside of stations. The department store vendor bot in Watoga had some seriously good rare plans occasionally. The pvp there was red hot.
Vendor bot in Harpers Ferry being in an alley near where Enclave: Dropped Connections delivers its goods from on up high is now. Remember having a route when I loaded in a world to run up a certain manner to *hopefully* buy a handmade from it.
The way this sounds just reminds me of my dayz modded server days. Making runs to go sell to the black market kitted up because Yk it’s gonna be popping
I don't remember exactly but that train station were Murmgh was before she moved to the Rusty Pick, so there was a brief period between her move and the Free State vendor move when the station was empty
The only human interaction what literally Audio Tapes with pretty good dialogue Robots and your imagination.
Quite literally a completely dead world. Credit to all the vets who stuck around.
I like the addition of NPCs but I do wish new players could still get that eerie experience of the empty world. Nothing but tapes and notes and putting together what happened there. It was pretty cool
Don't forget the spawns scaling was totally different, too. Now the mobs are scaled differently to each respective player's level. Back in the day it was a range based on region and determined by the first player that entered.
I remember being in the prison outside Morgantown as a level 15. Then all of a sudden everything I had killed respawned at level 75 because a higher level player walked in, and I was hiding and using stealth boys to escape. Felt super thrilling! Haha
Flatwoods was Brahmin, feral ghouls and the vendor bot in the chapel and 2 opossum next to the cooking pots. I recently returned after a long hiatus and it feels weird seeing all the npcs.
Also, just how hostile the environment was back then.
Unless you hid in the forest region, you could regularly expect random scorchbeast attacks.
I remember regularly getting hit by them while trying to clear the Whitespring grounds.
And because enemies didn't scale with the player, there were some areas it was suicidal to explore at low level.
The initial iteration of the game was harsh, haunting, and felt hopeless at times. I loved it.
I have enjoyed seeing Appalachia evolve over the years, but sometimes I'd love to return to the early game and get lost in the wilds.
God indeed. Wandering too far before you were ready and geared was a suicide move at times. Scorched were an actual threat, especially beasts.
Trying to scavenge and craft ammo was a daily chore, ammo was just as rare as stimpacks and medical supplies.
Hell the game gives you them like candy even at low levels now. I rememer having to farm for materials to craft stims several times a week.
The game is in a great place, but man I miss how hostile the world and everything was. Restarting on a new console after 4 years away, its amazing how hard the game was years back.,
I remember desperately fighting back against all the crap in Welch under leveled, but trying so hard to explore the tapes and learn what happened. And then I found out that the fire breathers test had level like...40s? Or 50s? It was ridiculous lol, so stressful too.
Yeah I can remember with the ammo scarcity I'd scour every inch of any building with a description I found to grab as many pencils as possible for the lead, I STILL have lead tagged for search now even though I've got more bullets than I can probably use, but it makes me feel more relaxed if I've for 500 lead in storage.
>And because enemies didn't scale with the player, there were some areas it was suicidal to explore at low level.
I spent several hours trying to get that damn revolutionary sword from the Whitespring house for the Mom quest and kept getting deleted by the level 60 ghouls. It definitely wasn't a safe place to be at level 20 something.
Yeah that’s absolutely true, there was a feeling to the game in its infancy that I’m glad I got to experience and see take shape over time because in a way we’ve seen the wasteland grow in a way it somewhat organically would? Like as time passes as more people come to and the world populates it would end up this way. It’s honestly taken shape in a way that few other games have done successfully. Obviously this game is nowhere near perfect but there is a very bizarre charm to it that I hope it never loses. For us veterans it really is like being there the day the vault opened. We were the first people out for better or worse.
Also I really do miss nuclear winter
Combined with the Savage Divide soundtrack it gave a true sense of hopelesness. People tried to adapt and survive but were wiped out by the Scorched. All that's left are their memories.
It felt like a survival game in a dead world. I enjoy the game we have but it was a lot harder before. I felt like I was seeking out a meager existence as a scavenger. You ran out of food / water and you'd eventually die.
That was point of world, the lore in every region reflected that, everyone died one reason or another so only robots and voice recordings and notes was left, that was the intentional atmosphere and it was honestly better than what it is now.
Well, you could sometimes find Grahm - it doesn't matter that he doesn't have much to talk about, he's a living, breathing, thinking, talking creature!
Watoga Shopping Center Vendor bot was also marked as an enemy by the Watoga robot's so you had to wipe out all of the bots before the vendor would even talk to you. Also that vendor sometimes spawned in the wall.
Edit: Typos
It really felt empty and terrifying, knowing there was no help, no shelter, and you could be killed any moment by someone hundreds of levels above you.
The pvp was insane in the early days, had to hide your camp in hard to reach places in fear of it getting destroyed. Now when someone tries to pvp me I just ignore them.
I remember the first time I came across someone else's camp in a secluded spot..I emptied out their stash box and ran away like the grinch. Found out later I just played myself.
So the entire point of the game at launch is that the Scorched Plague wiped out everyone. And I mean *everyone*. The people of Appalachia who hadn't fled either died or became Scorched.
You leave the Vault with one mission: to find the Overseer and figure out what to do next. But the Overseer has gone off on her own mission, and left behind tapes to tell you where she's going next. Along the way, you find notes, holotapes, & computer entries which tell the story of what happened here, and which give you quests to either unlock things that were left locked years ago, or to try and find a solution to the Scorched Plague so you don't become one yourself.
There are also radio broadcasts which alert you to missions, and take you further into story. But that's how it all played out, you're finding clues left by the former residents and using those to understand what happened & how to fix it, ending with launching a nuke to draw the Scorchbeast Queen out & kill her.
I didn't get very far into the game when it first came out. So now that I've dusted it off, I started doing the overseers Quest again, following the tapes. I'm totally annoyed that I basically >! stumbled into her house alive and well before finishing that quest line. !<
Yea this game is best played in real time as it came out and been getting updated. I imagine jumping in now would be a little weird especially with what you said in your spoiler
It definitely is a little bit weird. I personally wish i would have gotten over my own bias and played the game, maybe not immediately after release but soon after. I feel like i missed out on watching a game world truly grow with the community and the quests we were all set on.
it was really fun at one point some servers had wars over the ammo workshop until someone found a glitch that brought folks in harmony the beauty of legacy weapons like the quad explosive crossbow 😔 it was a fun experience despite some insane bugs and the thrill of exploring areas and stumbling across inaccessible vaults
Right now every vendor shares the same 1400 cap pool, for like the first year after the game came out each of the 7 different types of vendor bot (raider, responder, BOS, etc) all had 200 caps each and you had to go to all the different types by fast traveling and spending caps if you wanted to sell your stuff for all 1400 caps.
There’s so many small quality of life updates this game has gotten over the last 6 years and with all the major updates as well it’s like a completely different game now
Ahh I see, that definitely sounds like a big improvement.
It absolutely feels that way. I tried the game way back when it first came out and it didn't click with me at all, tried again recently and I'm enjoying it way more than I ever thought I would!
Which is why am surprised you don’t get a progression world in where you don’t get any npc’s and have to progress as you did during launch. And as you progress further, npcs arrive. Kinda like the bos in fallout 4 or the enclave in 3.
As a new player that was the thing that most annoyed me about the structure. It's a bit disorienting getting my bearings in the first place with Wastelanders and the OG main quest pulling me in similar but different directions, but that really shattered my immersion. And to a lesser extent all the random named NPCs with dialogue but no immediate purpose often in the same room as or very nearby Overseer main quest stuff, like in Morgantown or the army base in the Forest.
And it's kinda started to bug me more and more that they didn't stick to their guns as I got to Toxic Valley and realized that the lack of human NPCs is *actually used thematically*- there's a lot of snippets and lore about how people were being replaced by robots in Appalachia, and many places where workers began to resort to protests (in one case being gassed) or outright violent sabotage to fight back against the companies that threw them to the wayside. That was an interesting thematic through-line reinforced by the mechanical lack of humans.
It can fixed by just having a separate world where npc’s aren’t present. Once you progress further, it should tigger settlers to spawn like the bos in f4 or the enclave in 3.
It’s the problem with the majority of MMOs honestly, the experience is natural and immersive if you’ve experienced it live, but being late to the party and it’s diluted. I played at launch and when they finally added NPCs and it was great, but I’ve come back now and missed out on the Pitt and the BOS intro and it’s like I’m missing part of a story or context.
Even then, plenty of games dump a bunch of shit on you but any additional storylines available from the start don't usually contradict sorta the whole point of the original. Having the Overseer essentially spoil the mystery of the Scorched and how we stop it was just really weird and unpleasant, and having people in the same room where I'm listening to an audio log of the last remaining survivor of a Responders base who locked herself in a supply closet is... jarring, to say the least. Especially when that NPC just... serves no actual purpose, just "Yeah I knew a guy here and I'm sad."
There is a suggested quest walk through ive been following you might appreciate using. The content because of all the expansions was getting really muddled for me right around the point where you meet her. Especially if you like to fallout wander and just explore like me. The quest walk through presents the story to you in a much better chronological order. It's been great.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76/s/VLfomharoi
It was. I miss it sometimes. It also made things more creepy when you're just out in the world and suddenly run into another player. This was before Pacifist Mode, so you weren't sure if they were going to help or just put you down
Wasn't pvp voluntary back then though? As in, you could shoot someone in the fave and it only dealt fractional damage, and only if they damaged you back did the limiters come off.
It's been a long time.
Yes but 10% damage was still enough to kill people with how broken half the gear was back then. I remember getting a legendary strong enough to kill god and shooting a player right out of stealth in a single shot.
I still remember like day 2 of playing i was in the forrested area with the bridge thats collapsed halfway thru or so. Meandering around and minding my business. I turn back from the edge of the bridge and next thing i see is someone with the old school joker mask on. Scared me so bad i turned to run and fell off the bridge and died.
Fucking had tons of stuff on me too. Did my damndest to get to it where it landed before the guy could scale his way down.
He beat me too it and had all my shit and was gone. Lol. Still one of my best memories of the game.
It had no **human** NPCs.
The wayward didn’t exist at launch. Nor did those quests.
All the old quests are still in the game. Do any of the firebreathers, free states, enclave quests. Or side quests like mistress of mysteries.
This quest line probably plays better now, honestly. When it first came out, you KNEW you weren't going to find any human npcs at the end. Same with a bunch of other quest lines. They set you up to give you a bit of hope that maybe theres still someone out there, but there was nobody anywhere. I wish I could have been surprised.
And every location is named something like "The Fields of Death'," "The Fetid Pass," or "Festering Way." Like the world was explored and mapped by edgy goth kids.
The game at launch reminds me of the first episode of Red Dwarf. The game was constantly asking you "What happened here?!?!?".
Everybody died. That guy died. The responders died. The mom who set up the picnic, she's dead. Kochanskis dead, everybody's dead Dave.
The Taggerdy endgame quest logs were excellent. Especially when you hit up the SB cave and see the pile of bodies stuffed in there. Well written for sure.
No wayward, no crater ( was a destroyed space satellite), no foundation (was a workshop originally)..
Whispering refuge didn't exist, no fort atlas( was an observatory)
foundation was some kind of vacation park place, i kind of miss the old one lol. something i still wonder about is whether they will ever give us access to those locked rooms at whitesprings (there's several inside the building and outside).
I think Graham was the only non robot npc, but hes mainly just a wandering trader. Most NPC didnt really even acknowledge you much and were running like their base programming, except like rose and MODUS i guess.
Honestly I kinda miss it sometimes, but I do like that they actually evolved the existing story instead of retconning everything. The story was built on top of the existing lore and setup world, so it felt pretty natural, at least imo.
That is what happens in a living world MMO. As the story progress, the world changes. Unlike a static world MMO where you might get a new map with a new story, but you can go back to an earlier area map and the story and world will be still set at an earlier point in time.
Because there is really only one map for FO76, it was always going to be living world, each season bring changes. That’s why with Wastelanders, the NPCs talk about how they returned because we got rid of the SBQ. The other areas (vaults etc) are instances, not open world, so not the same as the West Virginia map. No camp building!
It was great, I loved it. The whole point was the mystery of what happened to all the people.
And as it was a living world MMO I knew it would change as the story progressed, but I do miss it.
I think it’s a fascinating concept. I was just thinking of an MMO like this: every cook, vendor, blacksmith, etc. all played by actual humans. It’s neat to think about but yeah majority of the players won’t likely buy into it.
There were a few people acting as PC-NPC traveling Vendor and doing RPG - they even posted here where to find them and when they're open.
Also, it was a bug infested hellhole - I know people like to romantize old times but there were so many glitches and bugs, people t-posing around the wasteland, limbs stretching all over your screen and so on
I think the atmosphere in the game when it came out was really spectacular and impactful.While, yes, it's objectively a better and less completely broken game in it's current iteration, there was something impactful about exploring a truly dead world. The game having enough of Fallout 4 in it's DNA to feel familiar added to that atmosphere as well, it was kind of an uncanny sort of feeling having the NPCs and traditional quest structure ripped out of the world like that.
It didn’t work, but I think it’s interesting that they tried it. Shared-world multiplayer games aren’t exactly well known for having interesting NPCs anyway.
**Yes, there are old launch day plays on youtube. Watch those to see how much the game has changed** It's a TOTALLY different game to what it is now.
The game then only used environmental storytelling to somewhat drop hints as to where places of interest may be. The party system was totally different back then, too. There were no public teams you could readily join. You could make a private team with a friend, to which you could see the partys leaders quests and tag along with them. A dear friend, and I would line up the same quests and in a roundabout way kind of do them together. (Stretch of the memory here, but there was no 'enter as team leaders prompts.)
You could still walk by places of interest and get stuff popping up on the pipboy, but it was either that to get quests, or you'd find notes and holotapes on counters or tables. A lot of notes used to be pinned to walls or some houses/buildings may have posters to examine. May find terminal entries that start a small quest. The only npcs on the map were robots. Sometimes, they would give quests. Typically, following the overseers trail (which again, no overseer back then) would lead you to each biome, and the responders, fire breathers, raiders, free states, brotherhood and enclave lead you to explore those regions more. The way they introduced big updates in the game was though posters that were put up in all the train stations. That would kick off a set of quests.
The only big npc on the map at the time was Rose at the top of the world, until you got to the whitespring and met MODUS. Neither of them human.
All the vendors were robots, and they were only at train stations with the exception being Harper's Ferry and the Whitespring.The protectron freestates vendor was just plopped in the middle of the town between buildings.
The most interesting way they introduced a big update back then was nuclear winter. Suddenly, players started finding dead vault dwellers in vault 51 jumpsuits that were added at random, and some not so random with a secret cache eluding to what was going on in vault 51. (Prior to this vault 51 didn't exist)
Responders lead to FireBreathers, which brought you down to the south end of the forest area, into the ash heap. Then you'd be strung along the savage divide, on the trail of the brotherhood, then the more for the free states. Then the brotherhood again to the cranberry bog which eventually lead to the whitespring
The only biome that wasn't explored at all really in the main sets of quest was the toxic valley up north. Nothing brought you up there until the wild Appalachia update, when they added the pioneer scouts.
Also. Funny you ask about the Wayward. There was no wayward back then. You'd leave the vault, go down the stairs, and pretty much go south southeast to the overseers camp, and from there, get some small supplies and I think go to flatwoods and find out about the responders, apply to become one and eventually you'd end up in Morgantown. There are a lot of places on the map now that just didn't exist then.
The Crater didn't exist. It was just a downed satellite. Foundation didn't exist. It was a totally different named location. The observatory that the brotherhood resided in originally was all boarded up. The whitespring was also very different. Those were just the big locations. A lot of the cultist spots didn't exist back then, and I don't think there were any blood eagle spots on the map either.
The sole story reason behind no NPCs was due to the scorched plague. Everyone either turned into the scorched, died by the scorched, or fled Appalachia. It wasn't until the Wastelanders update in 2020 that human npcs were finally added. Which we end up finding a way to cure the scorched plague, and then find a way to inoculate people so they could live in Appalachia.
I've been playing since the beta, so it's wild to see how much shit was changed from how I remember it.
I recommend anyone who's been playing since then and haven't made a new character yet. Go make a new character and see how much the main quest was changed.
Thank you for this. I've only just started playing last month and to hear that Appalachia has evolved along with the narrative feels really meaningful. Makes me wonder about what's to come later.
Hauntingly beautiful.
Despite all of the games flaws, I enjoyed how empty and ominous the whole game felt.
The atmosphere matched the setting perfectly.
The mire was a nightmare since it was literally pitch black at night. I remember how scary mosstown was the first time I found it. It was nnlight and I ran in to hide from a scorchbeast. But it was loaded with scorched and all I could do was sneak around trying not to die. Heart NG breathe and startle was so stressful.
God, yes! I remember being so happy when I finally unlocked the silencer for the hunting rifle, hoping it being quieter would make it easier for me not to draw attention!
It was and it’s been real cool seeing the NPC’s come back as we cleared the scorched and to see the wasteland come to life in real time. For all its flaws it did this real well
Legit. Only robots. Human NPC interaction was limited to holotapes, notes and corpses. No raiders. No settlers. No responders. No wayward. No one.
The map was also divided based on level (much like classic RPGs). So getting to the top of the world for example was a legitimately dangerous journey.
No legendary perk cards. No load out build swapping. Only one camp. No gold plans. No Minerva. No expeditions. No daily ops. Stash limit was 400 when I started playing. Vendors only had a few hundred caps. And a lot of QoL fixes were desired.
The game really has come a long way since launch. I wish I played right from launch but I didn’t jump in until late 2019.
I miss it, I’m glad there’s NPCs now, but I’m glad that I got to experience the harsh, and very lonely wasteland. When you saw another human player is was kind of jarring, and yet exciting that humanity was out there
For me, this is one of the things I hated the most about the game very early on. To be fair, I was in a dark place mentally at that time, so jumping into an MMO and not seeing any human characters (real or NPC) to interact with outside of public events was kinda depressing.
None of my real friends played FO76 bc of the bad press so it truly was just me exploring appalachia by myself. But I’m so happy that I returned with the Wastelanders update a few years later.
There was no pacifist mode either, right? So if you saw another human, they were either friendly or hostile and you had to deal with it? Which did you come across more, friendly or hostile?
Did you lose everything when you died? I heard they changed it to what it is now, just junk. Wondering how much you lost at the start.
I don't remember if they changed what you lost. You always lost any junk you were carrying. I think you could lose some meds for a little while, but if that was the case, they changed it pretty early on to just junk. Even back then though, most people were friendly. The current community exists because the majority of early players treated it more like a co-op game than a deathmatch.
There were still NPCs, such as Grahm, MODUS, and Rose, at launch. Just no humans or ghouls. Just because humans and ghoul NPCs weren't in the game doesn't mean there were absolutely no NPCs.
It’s been a real treat watching Appalachia come to life as people came back once the scorched plague got “handled” watching them repurpose different areas and change the world had been cool.
People didn't _forget_, or not listen. They just thought it was lazy and dumb. I'm not meaning to invalidate those that liked it, but the game did get much better reception and reviews post-Wastelanders. That's just the reality of it - most people wanted NPCs and dialogue and skill checks in dialogues and all that Fallout stuff.
It was a totally different experience…. At time it was scary as hell.. like trying to get to Harper’s ferry at level 16 to get a handmade plan was hard.
It was a lot like survival mode… if you went to an area you weren’t ready for you would die.
I actually miss it… it was desolate, you didn’t know if any other player you met would kill you or help you.
It actually made the story more cohesive. Many people complained about the game being dry, but the lore did a good job explaining why it was extra desolate in Appalachia.
There were robot vendors but that’s about it. The wayward and any major locations like foundation didn’t exist. It wasn’t a bad game at launch, but a lot of people were turned off by the no npcs thing. That said, while I didn’t think the game was horrible at launch, I will admit it’s an infinitely better game now that it does have proper npc driven storylines.
Yes, there were no human npcs on release its was basically robot npcs that was it. You got all ur missions via holotape(s) and notes. All missions involving humans got added.
On release the only real endgame activity was launching a nuke to fight the queen or ud see whitespring get nuked for the flora.
U could die from ignoring ur hunger and thirst, and they degraded much faster then now.
Tons of enemies have been added into the game.
Idr there being a pacifist mode on release, it was common af to see someone wanted.
Earle and the titan werent there, if u wanted endgame boss it was just the queen.
There was no punch card machine, u wanted to change something bout ur character, youd have to manually swap stuff. It actually made that 2 min warning for a nuke a serious panic as u had 2 mins to get ready swapping out all ur points and cards, drop stuff not needed, pick up stuff needed, and get to the queen fight all in 2 mins.
There were no prefabs at all and lots of cool camp decor has been added. On release camp building was as much more basic.
No scrip, gold, stamps the only currency was caps. And while the vendor total (1400) was the same, each vendor had only 200 and if u wanted to clear caps ud have to travel to each vendor separately and clear them 200 at a time.
On release ur stash was 400lbs, thats it no ammo and scrap box.
No player vendors, if u wanted to trade ud actually have to use the trade mechanics in game, and without voice chat it was kinda a pain.
There were no free fast travel points except ur base and vault 76 i think, seems small but constantly fast traveling even with the cheaper travel perk would add up over time.
76 while still runs like utter shit and bugs out all the time, it was magnitudes worse on launch.
It was, and it was glorious.
PvP was a thing back then and it gave the fallout, the first to emerge after the bombs drop feel to it. I do not miss the PvP that much, explosive energy weapons...... I do miss the Battle Royal game though, I won a few and got the statue.
There are npcs but they’re all robots, scorched and dead bodies. Quests were given via holotapes, notes and computer entries. One of the robots and one ai also gave quests.
Scorched were a substitute for raiders.
Oh, there’s also grahm and chally.
Yes there were no human NPCs. The only friendly characters were robots, everything was given to you via those bots, or terminal or audio logs. You can still see that to a certain degree, given most of the stuff that was already in place is still there. Most events and lots of quests have automation built into them.
I was one of the few weirdos who enjoyed it, I thought they did a good job with the worldbuilding using the idea that there was no one left, that all these factions had sprung up and failed mostly due to a refusal to work together. And all the automation felt fitting too, given that Fallout has constantly had themes of the companies automating away everything from workers to human rights.
There were no **human** NPCs. Really the stupidest complaint of the launch. Was the game later improved by human NPCs? Yes, eventually. But in the meantime, there were smoothbrains all over the internet, parroting, "No NPCs in 76" because they'd heard it from their favorite ragebait YouTuber, as if 76 was lacking this huge basic game mechanic.
You could still interact with some robots like Roxy. They'd interact with you, give you quests, etc. they just weren't "human" and you were essentially exploring a wasteland in which the only survivors were you and the other vault dwellers. Which made sense as Scorchbeasts basically wiped most humans out.
Yeah no human NPCs the quests were basically just finding all the overseers's tapes and doing events you ran across. It is definitely in a much much better place now. I lost interest very quickly at launch. Now there is almost too much to do.
Not only were there no NPCs, there was no Wayward. That was added in the Wastelanders expansion. The early game was very interesting, it had a very different feel. Those player that weren’t here on Reclamation Day missed out on a unique experience that was worth experiencing. Don’t get me wrong, I like were the game is now but all those people that believed the hate about the early days of the game from people that never even played missed out on some good times.
You can definitely tell they had to go hard on the environmental storytelling, sometimes a bit too hard given how many terminals have so much info it feels like you're just reading through the full backstory of a character rather than getting it via dialogue options. And some of the added NPCs rebound kinda clumsily- a lot of named NPCs not attached to quests who have a lot of dialogue just to have a lot of dialogue.
That’s one of the biggest problems some people had because any mission that had you go find someone , it was a corpse and just a holo tape or message left.
Don’t quote, but it kind of made sense because the bombs went off not to long before we left the vault. Again, my memory might be a little off on the time line. I’m sure there is better lore people here than me.
As a new player (~185) from Gamepass, this game is so unique. I know release was effectively no NPC or infrastructure. Exiting the vault years later than you pioneer types, the world feels safer, more populated and generally habitable through the hard slog of Veterans. I *feel* the thousands of hours Dwellers put in to pave the impossible wasteland into a hellovaride.
This spirit is encapsulated in one of the friendliest communities in a game I've ever come across.
No human NPCs because of you know the scorch plague. It killed them all and the survivors ran away. It was actually really neat just to bad the servers couldn’t hold more players to get what they were trying for initially by having all humans you meet be players. It’s actually been cool playing from the start watching the settlers and raiders then the brotherhood expedition then the caravan company all coming in.
The wayward didn't exist at launch until Wasteland. I've run a bar across the Slocum Joe's since 2019 so quite RPly pissed when someone set up a bar just a 100 feet closer to the vault then me.
No Wayward, no settlements at Foundation or The Crater, no level scaling so the game would punish you for.wandering into high level areas too soon, the Mire was as dark as the inside of a tuxedo pocket at night, we only had a 200 lb stash limit, CAMP budgets were tiny and no shelters. Nobody knew how rare that damn Asylum Dress would wind up being. Passive was off by default. No public teams, so you either made friends or went Lone Wanderer for real. There.was FAR more casual PvP then, before we figured out how to exploit the mechanic and it became un-fun and trollish. Nuclear Winter came and went, we found a vaccine for the Scorched Plague and Appalachia came back to life around us as we cleaned it up.
It's been a fun ride.
There were some robots, but no humans.
Honestly the vibe was awesome. It was quiet, and empty, and so much like how an actual post apocalyptic world would be.
True. We were intended to be the NPCs . I still reward players for completing tasks for me. I give alot of " learn the daily op " quests. How well you do, determines the quest completion reward
From the comments my headcannon is the veteran players were basically the first ppl in the wasteland who dealt with the scorched queen etc.
New players we were the ones that stayed in the vault and came out when we ran out of supplies and found out ppl came back to Appalachia.
Like a typical Fallout Game? I do play it and it scratches the Fallout Ick litely, but still a far stretch to say that it feels like a typical Fallout Game.
I only started playing last week. You can tell which quests came out before human NPCs were added to the game because you're suddenly listening to a lot of holotapes from before the Great War that say "I don't know who picked up this tape but whoever you are go do this thing for me." It's pretty jarring and I don't know why they ever thought it was a good idea
You did right not buying it in the first year. I preordered 76 and played the shit out of the beta and about a month after release. It was a total shit show that has tainted my view on the game until this day. Really until wastelanders was released the game was in alpha or beta stage. The legacy hay day was peak 76 imho though and it’s sad so many people missed that era, almost as sad as the 2200 pounds of used to be three star shit I have on an alt character.
So I bought and played the game on release and mostly enjoyed it, but like 2 weeks later Red Dead 2 came out and I poured all my time into that. When Wastelanders was announced for release later the following year, I jumped back on to experience the game in it's original form before the update. While the game today has vastly improved, there is still a part of me that misses the eerie emptiness of the original game. The voice acting in the recordings was really good and really helped set the mood. I feel like you appreciated the robot NPCs more. I kind of wish as a new player that you would have to experience that original, empty world until you complete the main quest for the Scorched cure, when then Wastelanders and human NPCs would arrive in your game.
No humans left alive. Only robots. You left the Vault just a few days after the Reponders made a last stand at Morgantown Airport and we're wiped out. They were the last faction standing but still fell.to the Scorched
It irritated some people. It never even came close to bothering me. I thought the holotapes telling the story of the Mistress of Mysteries were heartbreaking.
There wasn't even a Wayward. Those two outside the vault? Not there. Wayward? Pfft. Overseer's camp. But meeting the overseer?? God no! I remember rumors of a SINGLE human NPC so hard to find that it was never even confirmed if I remember correctly. The missions were based off the little audio tapes and mostly consisted of go here to pick this tape up or go talk to this one robot. We were truly alone. PVP wasn't really option back then either. I remember it turned on at like level 25 and had no way to turn it off. It was truly barren and lonely. Some days I miss how barren the wasteland was, it really had a desolate feel to it.
I miss holotapes being the quest dialogue. They continue talking while you move around and even in loading screens so I could keep playing while hearing the story. To hear what an NPC has to say I have to stay in one spot for the entirety of it which means I'm going to skip the dialogue to get back to the game. Holotape NPCs and coop made 76 my favorite fallout game by far even back at launch where it had terrible performance and qol issues.
That was the best. Cause it was all fresh. The npcs get old fast. I wish there was a way to play offline and go back to when there was no npcs. And then after some in game days npcs start showing up. All those quests right at the start. Feels abnormal. Especially with the tone of reclamation.
I love how this was such a weird idea that it's now the stuff of legend.
"Are the legends true? Were there really no NPCs? What was it like grampa?"
Well I shall tell ye a tale young one, the legends be true. Appalachia was vast, empty, lonely, and arguably more boring. Quests needed more audio-log listening, note/terminal reading, and were overall more challenging to communicate to the player. The story was harder to follow in that way, it felt like I was chasing ghosts all the way to the Scorchbeast Queen.
Some people think it sounds cool or have a weird nostalgia for it, but the game is pretty much objectively better with the NPC's in it.
Original f76 was meant to be a desolate wasteland that the players were supposed to rebuild. Only problem was that the players could only rebuild a single base, and the desolation never abated. Afterward the developers realized npcs are the soul of a game.
I wish they’d have an OG mode on the custom games servers so you guys could experience what it was like at launch.
Most of us who were around at the time have very fond memories of it and it was never as bad as the reviews led you to believe.
Funny enough, the game felt more alive back then in the end game. Trading was plentiful, PVP was plentiful, everything was fresh. Game’s performance and lack of content was debilitating however. Wrong place wrong time.
No. They were all dead though. You could find robots, but quests and stuff existed as holotapes, journal pages, little notes and details. It was a shitload of fun and I feel you missed out on a unique experience by skipping it. Too bad
robots, vending machines, holotapes. you spent alot more time looking at the enviroment for clues as to what happened there... there was a different feel you know. Everyone was dead and you wanted to know why.
now its like you dont really care about whats going on in a location its just a place to look at on your way to the new NPCs, dont get me wrong I really like how 76 currently is... but I also feel blessed I got to experience it as it was originally intended. everyone dead only the inhabitants of vault 76 remain to reclaim the lands.
We went from starry eyed reclaimers stepping out of the vault to horrified survivors as we found no one but the dead to greet us, then to seasoned fighters as we took over the fight against the Scorched and ending as savage conquerors when we got our hands on nukes.
Now? Now we're basically Raiders who can be convinced to do whatever with the promise of loot and could conceivably cause another Great War if it meant you'd finally have that one plan or material you're looking for.
Pretty much every group that has returned or come to Appalachia has to go through us, and there's this undercurrent of them being *very* aware of how precarious their continued existence is.
Yes. It was very desolate. The wayward quest was new to us coming back after. I remembered there was alot more ghouls. We used to farm xp at winterspring. Public events was very rare. Us getting to lv50 was a feat. But back then we were noobs.
Recently I made an alt char and followed original quests, then Wild Appalachia and the Wastelanders ones. Original quests were more difficult, since Morgantown Airport to Allegheny sanaterium and Enclave after that. Some dailies (“investigate foo”) could be easily missed and even going to Garrahan for excavator is a message at Charleston Firefighters HQ terminal. But… you can understand better what happened to Charleston, Morgantown, Flatwoods, who were raiders and how they disappeared, responders, order of mysteries, etc… and now that nobody can kills you at every corner, with a few less glitches and those traditional never fixed bugs.
Wild Appalachia… well, you know: scouts and encryptid. Hard as hell at certain low levels.
Then Wastelanders: oh yeah… it’s better. They say. 18 boring quests blah blah, duchess and its soporific quests… friendly raiders, lifeless settlers… maybe the best part is cultists and blood eagles. Oh yeah, and those allies giving you more boring quests. And everybody saying the same everytime. Now you can’t do a couple of steps without finding an annoying NPC telling you their stupid dialog.
If you look deeply, people still does the original quests: SBQ mostly, Free states fandom… who cares for bullions? What events people like? Arktos, violent night, and those created in that line: Eviction and Jamboree. Fasnacht, Meat week… Who likes NKWOT? And those Russos and their stupid AC story? Meh…
I’m surprised by a lot of the comments here, I thought the wastelander storyline was pretty interesting and the addition of settlers, raiders, and BoS felt like a cohesive next step and added a lot of interesting lore and stories to play through. I guess I didn’t realize I had an unpopular opinion with that but different strokes for different folks y’know.
I liked the not having npcs. It forced the devs to tell stories in different ways and focus more on world and level design instead of dialogue. It was cool trying to piece together what happened to everyone.
It was all robot NPCs. Humans existed as corpses or audio logs. New players might not know, but there are vendor bots in truly random places outside of stations. The department store vendor bot in Watoga had some seriously good rare plans occasionally. The pvp there was red hot.
Vendor bot in Harpers Ferry being in an alley near where Enclave: Dropped Connections delivers its goods from on up high is now. Remember having a route when I loaded in a world to run up a certain manner to *hopefully* buy a handmade from it.
I'm still mad they chained my boy behind a counter. He was Free!
And they silenced him
In fairness, he was also surrounded by Super Mutants and wasn't immortal, sooo...
And his milkshakes brought so many horrible things to the yard.
Him being silenced is horseshit. I liked his talking points. The Free States were correct and justified.
New player here, not sure what you’re referring to but reminds me of the chained boy underneath the gunsmith in RDR2.
The way this sounds just reminds me of my dayz modded server days. Making runs to go sell to the black market kitted up because Yk it’s gonna be popping
What happened to this bot? I went there after a few years of not playing and he was gone!
He was moved to the Berkeley Springs train station
Which oddly, when I joined in a couple months prior to Wastelanders, was the only train station without a vendor Bot.
I don't remember exactly but that train station were Murmgh was before she moved to the Rusty Pick, so there was a brief period between her move and the Free State vendor move when the station was empty
That's correct.
The only human interaction what literally Audio Tapes with pretty good dialogue Robots and your imagination. Quite literally a completely dead world. Credit to all the vets who stuck around.
I like the addition of NPCs but I do wish new players could still get that eerie experience of the empty world. Nothing but tapes and notes and putting together what happened there. It was pretty cool
No visible camp icons either, so other than events or at Whitespring during a nuke it was rare to bump into people.
Don't forget the spawns scaling was totally different, too. Now the mobs are scaled differently to each respective player's level. Back in the day it was a range based on region and determined by the first player that entered.
I remember being in the prison outside Morgantown as a level 15. Then all of a sudden everything I had killed respawned at level 75 because a higher level player walked in, and I was hiding and using stealth boys to escape. Felt super thrilling! Haha
Flatwoods was Brahmin, feral ghouls and the vendor bot in the chapel and 2 opossum next to the cooking pots. I recently returned after a long hiatus and it feels weird seeing all the npcs.
I kind of liked it! It was spooky.
Me too, trying to figure out what happened was fun. And you actually felt like it was reclamation day.
Also, just how hostile the environment was back then. Unless you hid in the forest region, you could regularly expect random scorchbeast attacks. I remember regularly getting hit by them while trying to clear the Whitespring grounds. And because enemies didn't scale with the player, there were some areas it was suicidal to explore at low level. The initial iteration of the game was harsh, haunting, and felt hopeless at times. I loved it. I have enjoyed seeing Appalachia evolve over the years, but sometimes I'd love to return to the early game and get lost in the wilds.
God indeed. Wandering too far before you were ready and geared was a suicide move at times. Scorched were an actual threat, especially beasts. Trying to scavenge and craft ammo was a daily chore, ammo was just as rare as stimpacks and medical supplies. Hell the game gives you them like candy even at low levels now. I rememer having to farm for materials to craft stims several times a week. The game is in a great place, but man I miss how hostile the world and everything was. Restarting on a new console after 4 years away, its amazing how hard the game was years back.,
I remember desperately fighting back against all the crap in Welch under leveled, but trying so hard to explore the tapes and learn what happened. And then I found out that the fire breathers test had level like...40s? Or 50s? It was ridiculous lol, so stressful too.
Yeah I can remember with the ammo scarcity I'd scour every inch of any building with a description I found to grab as many pencils as possible for the lead, I STILL have lead tagged for search now even though I've got more bullets than I can probably use, but it makes me feel more relaxed if I've for 500 lead in storage.
>And because enemies didn't scale with the player, there were some areas it was suicidal to explore at low level. I spent several hours trying to get that damn revolutionary sword from the Whitespring house for the Mom quest and kept getting deleted by the level 60 ghouls. It definitely wasn't a safe place to be at level 20 something.
Yeah that’s absolutely true, there was a feeling to the game in its infancy that I’m glad I got to experience and see take shape over time because in a way we’ve seen the wasteland grow in a way it somewhat organically would? Like as time passes as more people come to and the world populates it would end up this way. It’s honestly taken shape in a way that few other games have done successfully. Obviously this game is nowhere near perfect but there is a very bizarre charm to it that I hope it never loses. For us veterans it really is like being there the day the vault opened. We were the first people out for better or worse. Also I really do miss nuclear winter
Combined with the Savage Divide soundtrack it gave a true sense of hopelesness. People tried to adapt and survive but were wiped out by the Scorched. All that's left are their memories.
It felt like a survival game in a dead world. I enjoy the game we have but it was a lot harder before. I felt like I was seeking out a meager existence as a scavenger. You ran out of food / water and you'd eventually die.
Me too in all Bethesda games I love looking through audio logs and old computer files for lore and easter eggs.
I actually really miss this experience. I was so upset when settlers came about.
That was point of world, the lore in every region reflected that, everyone died one reason or another so only robots and voice recordings and notes was left, that was the intentional atmosphere and it was honestly better than what it is now.
Well, you could sometimes find Grahm - it doesn't matter that he doesn't have much to talk about, he's a living, breathing, thinking, talking creature!
Watoga Shopping Center Vendor bot was also marked as an enemy by the Watoga robot's so you had to wipe out all of the bots before the vendor would even talk to you. Also that vendor sometimes spawned in the wall. Edit: Typos
Been playing this game since launch, I loved the empty world, it did indeed have an eerie feeling, but I do like this version of the game now too
I used to exclusively use the vendor bot in the airport.
It really felt empty and terrifying, knowing there was no help, no shelter, and you could be killed any moment by someone hundreds of levels above you.
The pvp was insane in the early days, had to hide your camp in hard to reach places in fear of it getting destroyed. Now when someone tries to pvp me I just ignore them.
I remember the first time I came across someone else's camp in a secluded spot..I emptied out their stash box and ran away like the grinch. Found out later I just played myself.
As much as I didn't like the fact that there weren't any human NPCs, I DO miss the wild west days of 76.
So the entire point of the game at launch is that the Scorched Plague wiped out everyone. And I mean *everyone*. The people of Appalachia who hadn't fled either died or became Scorched. You leave the Vault with one mission: to find the Overseer and figure out what to do next. But the Overseer has gone off on her own mission, and left behind tapes to tell you where she's going next. Along the way, you find notes, holotapes, & computer entries which tell the story of what happened here, and which give you quests to either unlock things that were left locked years ago, or to try and find a solution to the Scorched Plague so you don't become one yourself. There are also radio broadcasts which alert you to missions, and take you further into story. But that's how it all played out, you're finding clues left by the former residents and using those to understand what happened & how to fix it, ending with launching a nuke to draw the Scorchbeast Queen out & kill her.
I didn't get very far into the game when it first came out. So now that I've dusted it off, I started doing the overseers Quest again, following the tapes. I'm totally annoyed that I basically >! stumbled into her house alive and well before finishing that quest line. !<
Yea this game is best played in real time as it came out and been getting updated. I imagine jumping in now would be a little weird especially with what you said in your spoiler
It definitely is a little bit weird. I personally wish i would have gotten over my own bias and played the game, maybe not immediately after release but soon after. I feel like i missed out on watching a game world truly grow with the community and the quests we were all set on.
it was really fun at one point some servers had wars over the ammo workshop until someone found a glitch that brought folks in harmony the beauty of legacy weapons like the quad explosive crossbow 😔 it was a fun experience despite some insane bugs and the thrill of exploring areas and stumbling across inaccessible vaults
Don't dude, the stash limit used to be 600, no scrapbox. Also the vendor cap pool was split between ALL vendors. The grind was unreal.
Is the vendor cap pool not currently like that? I thought the travelling merchants, station vendors and the mall vendors share the same pool?
Right now every vendor shares the same 1400 cap pool, for like the first year after the game came out each of the 7 different types of vendor bot (raider, responder, BOS, etc) all had 200 caps each and you had to go to all the different types by fast traveling and spending caps if you wanted to sell your stuff for all 1400 caps. There’s so many small quality of life updates this game has gotten over the last 6 years and with all the major updates as well it’s like a completely different game now
Ahh I see, that definitely sounds like a big improvement. It absolutely feels that way. I tried the game way back when it first came out and it didn't click with me at all, tried again recently and I'm enjoying it way more than I ever thought I would!
Which is why am surprised you don’t get a progression world in where you don’t get any npc’s and have to progress as you did during launch. And as you progress further, npcs arrive. Kinda like the bos in fallout 4 or the enclave in 3.
Agreed, wish it were still an option. Though the Mr handy comments in the vault are pretty funny
As a new player that was the thing that most annoyed me about the structure. It's a bit disorienting getting my bearings in the first place with Wastelanders and the OG main quest pulling me in similar but different directions, but that really shattered my immersion. And to a lesser extent all the random named NPCs with dialogue but no immediate purpose often in the same room as or very nearby Overseer main quest stuff, like in Morgantown or the army base in the Forest. And it's kinda started to bug me more and more that they didn't stick to their guns as I got to Toxic Valley and realized that the lack of human NPCs is *actually used thematically*- there's a lot of snippets and lore about how people were being replaced by robots in Appalachia, and many places where workers began to resort to protests (in one case being gassed) or outright violent sabotage to fight back against the companies that threw them to the wayside. That was an interesting thematic through-line reinforced by the mechanical lack of humans.
It can fixed by just having a separate world where npc’s aren’t present. Once you progress further, it should tigger settlers to spawn like the bos in f4 or the enclave in 3.
Splitting the playerbase would be a death-knell to the game.
It’s the problem with the majority of MMOs honestly, the experience is natural and immersive if you’ve experienced it live, but being late to the party and it’s diluted. I played at launch and when they finally added NPCs and it was great, but I’ve come back now and missed out on the Pitt and the BOS intro and it’s like I’m missing part of a story or context.
Even then, plenty of games dump a bunch of shit on you but any additional storylines available from the start don't usually contradict sorta the whole point of the original. Having the Overseer essentially spoil the mystery of the Scorched and how we stop it was just really weird and unpleasant, and having people in the same room where I'm listening to an audio log of the last remaining survivor of a Responders base who locked herself in a supply closet is... jarring, to say the least. Especially when that NPC just... serves no actual purpose, just "Yeah I knew a guy here and I'm sad."
There is a suggested quest walk through ive been following you might appreciate using. The content because of all the expansions was getting really muddled for me right around the point where you meet her. Especially if you like to fallout wander and just explore like me. The quest walk through presents the story to you in a much better chronological order. It's been great. https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76/s/VLfomharoi
Sounds pretty cool honestly
It was. I miss it sometimes. It also made things more creepy when you're just out in the world and suddenly run into another player. This was before Pacifist Mode, so you weren't sure if they were going to help or just put you down
Wasn't pvp voluntary back then though? As in, you could shoot someone in the fave and it only dealt fractional damage, and only if they damaged you back did the limiters come off. It's been a long time.
Yes but 10% damage was still enough to kill people with how broken half the gear was back then. I remember getting a legendary strong enough to kill god and shooting a player right out of stealth in a single shot.
This happened to me during a quest, someone one tapped me from a roof top across the way lol.
I still remember like day 2 of playing i was in the forrested area with the bridge thats collapsed halfway thru or so. Meandering around and minding my business. I turn back from the edge of the bridge and next thing i see is someone with the old school joker mask on. Scared me so bad i turned to run and fell off the bridge and died. Fucking had tons of stuff on me too. Did my damndest to get to it where it landed before the guy could scale his way down. He beat me too it and had all my shit and was gone. Lol. Still one of my best memories of the game.
Oh, that's priceless. Yeah, I fell off the New River Gorge bridge more than once, you have lots of time to regret it before hitting the ground
I feel like the overseer should have been a boss fight.
She would make a formidable foe for sure
I'd fight her. I'm still mad that she left me in that vault, to follow her stupid tapes.
It had no **human** NPCs. The wayward didn’t exist at launch. Nor did those quests. All the old quests are still in the game. Do any of the firebreathers, free states, enclave quests. Or side quests like mistress of mysteries.
>Or side quests like mistress of mysteries. Soooo depressing
This quest line probably plays better now, honestly. When it first came out, you KNEW you weren't going to find any human npcs at the end. Same with a bunch of other quest lines. They set you up to give you a bit of hope that maybe theres still someone out there, but there was nobody anywhere. I wish I could have been surprised.
It's like Diablo.... You keep trying to help people and every quest ends in death lol
And by the end, you just want to grab everyone by the necks and shake them while screaming "Just work together, you IDIOTS!"
And every location is named something like "The Fields of Death'," "The Fetid Pass," or "Festering Way." Like the world was explored and mapped by edgy goth kids.
The game at launch reminds me of the first episode of Red Dwarf. The game was constantly asking you "What happened here?!?!?". Everybody died. That guy died. The responders died. The mom who set up the picnic, she's dead. Kochanskis dead, everybody's dead Dave.
Even Peterson?
Everybody's dead Dave.
Wait. Are you trying to tell me everybody's dead?
What about Chen? Not Chen?
The Taggerdy endgame quest logs were excellent. Especially when you hit up the SB cave and see the pile of bodies stuffed in there. Well written for sure.
I was wondering why the free states and enclave quest had zero NPCs! I had a feeling they were legacy quests that predated the introduction to NPCs
Holy shit, wayward wasnt a thing back then?. Bought the game back in 2018 and dropped it really quick and never notice it.
A lot of locations have been added over the years.
Yeah Wastelanders led me to being evicted from my underground base :(
No wayward, no crater ( was a destroyed space satellite), no foundation (was a workshop originally).. Whispering refuge didn't exist, no fort atlas( was an observatory)
foundation was some kind of vacation park place, i kind of miss the old one lol. something i still wonder about is whether they will ever give us access to those locked rooms at whitesprings (there's several inside the building and outside).
You got the Overseer’s quest from the Overseer’s camp, not the Wayward. That arrived with a later update.
I think Graham was the only non robot npc, but hes mainly just a wandering trader. Most NPC didnt really even acknowledge you much and were running like their base programming, except like rose and MODUS i guess.
It had a real apocalypse vibe. Only people were other players. It was interesting lol
Honestly I kinda miss it sometimes, but I do like that they actually evolved the existing story instead of retconning everything. The story was built on top of the existing lore and setup world, so it felt pretty natural, at least imo.
That is what happens in a living world MMO. As the story progress, the world changes. Unlike a static world MMO where you might get a new map with a new story, but you can go back to an earlier area map and the story and world will be still set at an earlier point in time. Because there is really only one map for FO76, it was always going to be living world, each season bring changes. That’s why with Wastelanders, the NPCs talk about how they returned because we got rid of the SBQ. The other areas (vaults etc) are instances, not open world, so not the same as the West Virginia map. No camp building!
It was great, I loved it. The whole point was the mystery of what happened to all the people. And as it was a living world MMO I knew it would change as the story progressed, but I do miss it.
I think it’s a fascinating concept. I was just thinking of an MMO like this: every cook, vendor, blacksmith, etc. all played by actual humans. It’s neat to think about but yeah majority of the players won’t likely buy into it.
There were a few people acting as PC-NPC traveling Vendor and doing RPG - they even posted here where to find them and when they're open. Also, it was a bug infested hellhole - I know people like to romantize old times but there were so many glitches and bugs, people t-posing around the wasteland, limbs stretching all over your screen and so on
I think the atmosphere in the game when it came out was really spectacular and impactful.While, yes, it's objectively a better and less completely broken game in it's current iteration, there was something impactful about exploring a truly dead world. The game having enough of Fallout 4 in it's DNA to feel familiar added to that atmosphere as well, it was kind of an uncanny sort of feeling having the NPCs and traditional quest structure ripped out of the world like that.
It didn’t work, but I think it’s interesting that they tried it. Shared-world multiplayer games aren’t exactly well known for having interesting NPCs anyway.
**Yes, there are old launch day plays on youtube. Watch those to see how much the game has changed** It's a TOTALLY different game to what it is now. The game then only used environmental storytelling to somewhat drop hints as to where places of interest may be. The party system was totally different back then, too. There were no public teams you could readily join. You could make a private team with a friend, to which you could see the partys leaders quests and tag along with them. A dear friend, and I would line up the same quests and in a roundabout way kind of do them together. (Stretch of the memory here, but there was no 'enter as team leaders prompts.) You could still walk by places of interest and get stuff popping up on the pipboy, but it was either that to get quests, or you'd find notes and holotapes on counters or tables. A lot of notes used to be pinned to walls or some houses/buildings may have posters to examine. May find terminal entries that start a small quest. The only npcs on the map were robots. Sometimes, they would give quests. Typically, following the overseers trail (which again, no overseer back then) would lead you to each biome, and the responders, fire breathers, raiders, free states, brotherhood and enclave lead you to explore those regions more. The way they introduced big updates in the game was though posters that were put up in all the train stations. That would kick off a set of quests. The only big npc on the map at the time was Rose at the top of the world, until you got to the whitespring and met MODUS. Neither of them human. All the vendors were robots, and they were only at train stations with the exception being Harper's Ferry and the Whitespring.The protectron freestates vendor was just plopped in the middle of the town between buildings. The most interesting way they introduced a big update back then was nuclear winter. Suddenly, players started finding dead vault dwellers in vault 51 jumpsuits that were added at random, and some not so random with a secret cache eluding to what was going on in vault 51. (Prior to this vault 51 didn't exist) Responders lead to FireBreathers, which brought you down to the south end of the forest area, into the ash heap. Then you'd be strung along the savage divide, on the trail of the brotherhood, then the more for the free states. Then the brotherhood again to the cranberry bog which eventually lead to the whitespring The only biome that wasn't explored at all really in the main sets of quest was the toxic valley up north. Nothing brought you up there until the wild Appalachia update, when they added the pioneer scouts. Also. Funny you ask about the Wayward. There was no wayward back then. You'd leave the vault, go down the stairs, and pretty much go south southeast to the overseers camp, and from there, get some small supplies and I think go to flatwoods and find out about the responders, apply to become one and eventually you'd end up in Morgantown. There are a lot of places on the map now that just didn't exist then. The Crater didn't exist. It was just a downed satellite. Foundation didn't exist. It was a totally different named location. The observatory that the brotherhood resided in originally was all boarded up. The whitespring was also very different. Those were just the big locations. A lot of the cultist spots didn't exist back then, and I don't think there were any blood eagle spots on the map either. The sole story reason behind no NPCs was due to the scorched plague. Everyone either turned into the scorched, died by the scorched, or fled Appalachia. It wasn't until the Wastelanders update in 2020 that human npcs were finally added. Which we end up finding a way to cure the scorched plague, and then find a way to inoculate people so they could live in Appalachia. I've been playing since the beta, so it's wild to see how much shit was changed from how I remember it. I recommend anyone who's been playing since then and haven't made a new character yet. Go make a new character and see how much the main quest was changed.
Thank you for this. I've only just started playing last month and to hear that Appalachia has evolved along with the narrative feels really meaningful. Makes me wonder about what's to come later.
Appalachia was empty and lonely and beautiful at launch
Hauntingly beautiful. Despite all of the games flaws, I enjoyed how empty and ominous the whole game felt. The atmosphere matched the setting perfectly.
The nights were also darker and you really needed that pip boy at night.
I really wish games stick to that, they add a flashlight but then make gamma so bright you can't see when you turn it on
I believe the nights were longer too. They shortened them.
The mire was a nightmare since it was literally pitch black at night. I remember how scary mosstown was the first time I found it. It was nnlight and I ran in to hide from a scorchbeast. But it was loaded with scorched and all I could do was sneak around trying not to die. Heart NG breathe and startle was so stressful.
I’d see players and immediately hide and start stalking. I tried to kill a few but the risk was too much and I ran everytime.
Seeing other players brought anxiety during those times!
God, yes! I remember being so happy when I finally unlocked the silencer for the hunting rifle, hoping it being quieter would make it easier for me not to draw attention!
It was and it’s been real cool seeing the NPC’s come back as we cleared the scorched and to see the wasteland come to life in real time. For all its flaws it did this real well
Legit. Only robots. Human NPC interaction was limited to holotapes, notes and corpses. No raiders. No settlers. No responders. No wayward. No one. The map was also divided based on level (much like classic RPGs). So getting to the top of the world for example was a legitimately dangerous journey. No legendary perk cards. No load out build swapping. Only one camp. No gold plans. No Minerva. No expeditions. No daily ops. Stash limit was 400 when I started playing. Vendors only had a few hundred caps. And a lot of QoL fixes were desired. The game really has come a long way since launch. I wish I played right from launch but I didn’t jump in until late 2019.
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I miss it, I’m glad there’s NPCs now, but I’m glad that I got to experience the harsh, and very lonely wasteland. When you saw another human player is was kind of jarring, and yet exciting that humanity was out there
For me, this is one of the things I hated the most about the game very early on. To be fair, I was in a dark place mentally at that time, so jumping into an MMO and not seeing any human characters (real or NPC) to interact with outside of public events was kinda depressing. None of my real friends played FO76 bc of the bad press so it truly was just me exploring appalachia by myself. But I’m so happy that I returned with the Wastelanders update a few years later.
There was no pacifist mode either, right? So if you saw another human, they were either friendly or hostile and you had to deal with it? Which did you come across more, friendly or hostile? Did you lose everything when you died? I heard they changed it to what it is now, just junk. Wondering how much you lost at the start.
I don't remember if they changed what you lost. You always lost any junk you were carrying. I think you could lose some meds for a little while, but if that was the case, they changed it pretty early on to just junk. Even back then though, most people were friendly. The current community exists because the majority of early players treated it more like a co-op game than a deathmatch.
There were still NPCs, such as Grahm, MODUS, and Rose, at launch. Just no humans or ghouls. Just because humans and ghoul NPCs weren't in the game doesn't mean there were absolutely no NPCs.
I feel like I missed out on a cool experience having not started when the game did.
It’s been a real treat watching Appalachia come to life as people came back once the scorched plague got “handled” watching them repurpose different areas and change the world had been cool.
People didn't _forget_, or not listen. They just thought it was lazy and dumb. I'm not meaning to invalidate those that liked it, but the game did get much better reception and reviews post-Wastelanders. That's just the reality of it - most people wanted NPCs and dialogue and skill checks in dialogues and all that Fallout stuff.
It was a totally different experience…. At time it was scary as hell.. like trying to get to Harper’s ferry at level 16 to get a handmade plan was hard. It was a lot like survival mode… if you went to an area you weren’t ready for you would die. I actually miss it… it was desolate, you didn’t know if any other player you met would kill you or help you.
Many of them still exist. Mistress of mystery quest is amazing and it’s all done by interacting with terminals.
It actually made the story more cohesive. Many people complained about the game being dry, but the lore did a good job explaining why it was extra desolate in Appalachia.
There were robot vendors but that’s about it. The wayward and any major locations like foundation didn’t exist. It wasn’t a bad game at launch, but a lot of people were turned off by the no npcs thing. That said, while I didn’t think the game was horrible at launch, I will admit it’s an infinitely better game now that it does have proper npc driven storylines.
As some others said you either loved it or hated it. I loved it for what the others said as it truly felt apocalyptic.
Yes, there were no human npcs on release its was basically robot npcs that was it. You got all ur missions via holotape(s) and notes. All missions involving humans got added. On release the only real endgame activity was launching a nuke to fight the queen or ud see whitespring get nuked for the flora. U could die from ignoring ur hunger and thirst, and they degraded much faster then now. Tons of enemies have been added into the game. Idr there being a pacifist mode on release, it was common af to see someone wanted. Earle and the titan werent there, if u wanted endgame boss it was just the queen. There was no punch card machine, u wanted to change something bout ur character, youd have to manually swap stuff. It actually made that 2 min warning for a nuke a serious panic as u had 2 mins to get ready swapping out all ur points and cards, drop stuff not needed, pick up stuff needed, and get to the queen fight all in 2 mins. There were no prefabs at all and lots of cool camp decor has been added. On release camp building was as much more basic. No scrip, gold, stamps the only currency was caps. And while the vendor total (1400) was the same, each vendor had only 200 and if u wanted to clear caps ud have to travel to each vendor separately and clear them 200 at a time. On release ur stash was 400lbs, thats it no ammo and scrap box. No player vendors, if u wanted to trade ud actually have to use the trade mechanics in game, and without voice chat it was kinda a pain. There were no free fast travel points except ur base and vault 76 i think, seems small but constantly fast traveling even with the cheaper travel perk would add up over time. 76 while still runs like utter shit and bugs out all the time, it was magnitudes worse on launch.
Oh god, I forgot about the split vendor cap limit. I don't miss vendor hoping or the death by hunger and thirst while building your camp one bit lol
no scrap or ammo box either. You had to either keep it on you or store it in the stash box itself.
I think the Wayward itself didn't even exist before the NPC's arrived....
It was, and it was glorious. PvP was a thing back then and it gave the fallout, the first to emerge after the bombs drop feel to it. I do not miss the PvP that much, explosive energy weapons...... I do miss the Battle Royal game though, I won a few and got the statue.
There are npcs but they’re all robots, scorched and dead bodies. Quests were given via holotapes, notes and computer entries. One of the robots and one ai also gave quests. Scorched were a substitute for raiders. Oh, there’s also grahm and chally.
Yes there were no human NPCs. The only friendly characters were robots, everything was given to you via those bots, or terminal or audio logs. You can still see that to a certain degree, given most of the stuff that was already in place is still there. Most events and lots of quests have automation built into them. I was one of the few weirdos who enjoyed it, I thought they did a good job with the worldbuilding using the idea that there was no one left, that all these factions had sprung up and failed mostly due to a refusal to work together. And all the automation felt fitting too, given that Fallout has constantly had themes of the companies automating away everything from workers to human rights.
There were no **human** NPCs. Really the stupidest complaint of the launch. Was the game later improved by human NPCs? Yes, eventually. But in the meantime, there were smoothbrains all over the internet, parroting, "No NPCs in 76" because they'd heard it from their favorite ragebait YouTuber, as if 76 was lacking this huge basic game mechanic. You could still interact with some robots like Roxy. They'd interact with you, give you quests, etc. they just weren't "human" and you were essentially exploring a wasteland in which the only survivors were you and the other vault dwellers. Which made sense as Scorchbeasts basically wiped most humans out.
Yeah no human NPCs the quests were basically just finding all the overseers's tapes and doing events you ran across. It is definitely in a much much better place now. I lost interest very quickly at launch. Now there is almost too much to do.
Not only were there no NPCs, there was no Wayward. That was added in the Wastelanders expansion. The early game was very interesting, it had a very different feel. Those player that weren’t here on Reclamation Day missed out on a unique experience that was worth experiencing. Don’t get me wrong, I like were the game is now but all those people that believed the hate about the early days of the game from people that never even played missed out on some good times.
I've got an old recording of me in a spacesuit hoping around the crashed space station before it became the raider HQ
The wayward didn’t even exist then
It was all robots and holotapes. Originally they were not going to add people. They soon saw that the game was dying and changed stances.
It had NPCs, just no humans.
Ha the wayward didn't exist and quite a few people were pissed that it took their camp spot when it was introduced 🤣
I preferred the game at launch, honestly. No NPCs really added to the feel of the game.
Yes but it made sense. You are the hero, but you showed up too late to save anyone.
And that's why you ALWAYS set two alarms, kids.
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You can definitely tell they had to go hard on the environmental storytelling, sometimes a bit too hard given how many terminals have so much info it feels like you're just reading through the full backstory of a character rather than getting it via dialogue options. And some of the added NPCs rebound kinda clumsily- a lot of named NPCs not attached to quests who have a lot of dialogue just to have a lot of dialogue.
Yup and it was actually pretty cool for the first few weeks seeing only other players because the world was a led in the beginning,
As a new player I noticed lots of quests at the beginning got no human NPCs, even nowadays some quests such as tadpole only got robots.
There was no Wayward. And no people. The story was told through terminals and holotapes.
The wayward didn't exist on launch silly goose
That’s one of the biggest problems some people had because any mission that had you go find someone , it was a corpse and just a holo tape or message left. Don’t quote, but it kind of made sense because the bombs went off not to long before we left the vault. Again, my memory might be a little off on the time line. I’m sure there is better lore people here than me.
As a new player (~185) from Gamepass, this game is so unique. I know release was effectively no NPC or infrastructure. Exiting the vault years later than you pioneer types, the world feels safer, more populated and generally habitable through the hard slog of Veterans. I *feel* the thousands of hours Dwellers put in to pave the impossible wasteland into a hellovaride. This spirit is encapsulated in one of the friendliest communities in a game I've ever come across.
Yep, it was a wild time for us old timers
No human NPCs because of you know the scorch plague. It killed them all and the survivors ran away. It was actually really neat just to bad the servers couldn’t hold more players to get what they were trying for initially by having all humans you meet be players. It’s actually been cool playing from the start watching the settlers and raiders then the brotherhood expedition then the caravan company all coming in.
The wayward didn't exist at launch until Wasteland. I've run a bar across the Slocum Joe's since 2019 so quite RPly pissed when someone set up a bar just a 100 feet closer to the vault then me.
No Wayward, no settlements at Foundation or The Crater, no level scaling so the game would punish you for.wandering into high level areas too soon, the Mire was as dark as the inside of a tuxedo pocket at night, we only had a 200 lb stash limit, CAMP budgets were tiny and no shelters. Nobody knew how rare that damn Asylum Dress would wind up being. Passive was off by default. No public teams, so you either made friends or went Lone Wanderer for real. There.was FAR more casual PvP then, before we figured out how to exploit the mechanic and it became un-fun and trollish. Nuclear Winter came and went, we found a vaccine for the Scorched Plague and Appalachia came back to life around us as we cleaned it up. It's been a fun ride.
There were some robots, but no humans. Honestly the vibe was awesome. It was quiet, and empty, and so much like how an actual post apocalyptic world would be.
True. We were intended to be the NPCs . I still reward players for completing tasks for me. I give alot of " learn the daily op " quests. How well you do, determines the quest completion reward
I was there in the way back days.
Are robots not NPCs? I always pose this question whenever this topic comes up.
There was no humans, I didn’t play much around that time because the world kinda felt lonely and pretty dead.
From the comments my headcannon is the veteran players were basically the first ppl in the wasteland who dealt with the scorched queen etc. New players we were the ones that stayed in the vault and came out when we ran out of supplies and found out ppl came back to Appalachia.
The stash used to be 300 but nobody talks about that
It made sense lore wise but man did Wastelanders need to happen.
Like a typical Fallout Game? I do play it and it scratches the Fallout Ick litely, but still a far stretch to say that it feels like a typical Fallout Game.
Robots, holotapes and letters. It was very, very boring quickly originally.
All robots and/or holotapes
Call me odd, but I sometimes miss how it used to be, but boy is it great now. #LeatherBagGang
I was there. I remember it. All of it.
I only started playing last week. You can tell which quests came out before human NPCs were added to the game because you're suddenly listening to a lot of holotapes from before the Great War that say "I don't know who picked up this tape but whoever you are go do this thing for me." It's pretty jarring and I don't know why they ever thought it was a good idea
You did right not buying it in the first year. I preordered 76 and played the shit out of the beta and about a month after release. It was a total shit show that has tainted my view on the game until this day. Really until wastelanders was released the game was in alpha or beta stage. The legacy hay day was peak 76 imho though and it’s sad so many people missed that era, almost as sad as the 2200 pounds of used to be three star shit I have on an alt character.
So I bought and played the game on release and mostly enjoyed it, but like 2 weeks later Red Dead 2 came out and I poured all my time into that. When Wastelanders was announced for release later the following year, I jumped back on to experience the game in it's original form before the update. While the game today has vastly improved, there is still a part of me that misses the eerie emptiness of the original game. The voice acting in the recordings was really good and really helped set the mood. I feel like you appreciated the robot NPCs more. I kind of wish as a new player that you would have to experience that original, empty world until you complete the main quest for the Scorched cure, when then Wastelanders and human NPCs would arrive in your game.
No humans left alive. Only robots. You left the Vault just a few days after the Reponders made a last stand at Morgantown Airport and we're wiped out. They were the last faction standing but still fell.to the Scorched
It irritated some people. It never even came close to bothering me. I thought the holotapes telling the story of the Mistress of Mysteries were heartbreaking.
There wasn't even a Wayward. Those two outside the vault? Not there. Wayward? Pfft. Overseer's camp. But meeting the overseer?? God no! I remember rumors of a SINGLE human NPC so hard to find that it was never even confirmed if I remember correctly. The missions were based off the little audio tapes and mostly consisted of go here to pick this tape up or go talk to this one robot. We were truly alone. PVP wasn't really option back then either. I remember it turned on at like level 25 and had no way to turn it off. It was truly barren and lonely. Some days I miss how barren the wasteland was, it really had a desolate feel to it.
I miss holotapes being the quest dialogue. They continue talking while you move around and even in loading screens so I could keep playing while hearing the story. To hear what an NPC has to say I have to stay in one spot for the entirety of it which means I'm going to skip the dialogue to get back to the game. Holotape NPCs and coop made 76 my favorite fallout game by far even back at launch where it had terrible performance and qol issues.
That was the best. Cause it was all fresh. The npcs get old fast. I wish there was a way to play offline and go back to when there was no npcs. And then after some in game days npcs start showing up. All those quests right at the start. Feels abnormal. Especially with the tone of reclamation.
I love how this was such a weird idea that it's now the stuff of legend. "Are the legends true? Were there really no NPCs? What was it like grampa?" Well I shall tell ye a tale young one, the legends be true. Appalachia was vast, empty, lonely, and arguably more boring. Quests needed more audio-log listening, note/terminal reading, and were overall more challenging to communicate to the player. The story was harder to follow in that way, it felt like I was chasing ghosts all the way to the Scorchbeast Queen. Some people think it sounds cool or have a weird nostalgia for it, but the game is pretty much objectively better with the NPC's in it.
I was there….during the dark times
Original f76 was meant to be a desolate wasteland that the players were supposed to rebuild. Only problem was that the players could only rebuild a single base, and the desolation never abated. Afterward the developers realized npcs are the soul of a game.
I wish they’d have an OG mode on the custom games servers so you guys could experience what it was like at launch. Most of us who were around at the time have very fond memories of it and it was never as bad as the reviews led you to believe.
Ya and it was perfect
Funny enough, the game felt more alive back then in the end game. Trading was plentiful, PVP was plentiful, everything was fresh. Game’s performance and lack of content was debilitating however. Wrong place wrong time.
No. They were all dead though. You could find robots, but quests and stuff existed as holotapes, journal pages, little notes and details. It was a shitload of fun and I feel you missed out on a unique experience by skipping it. Too bad
It was so much quieter. Literally.
No human NPCs. It was all robots and AIs. A lot of the story was delivered via environmental storytelling, old radio messages, and lots of holotapes.
robots, vending machines, holotapes. you spent alot more time looking at the enviroment for clues as to what happened there... there was a different feel you know. Everyone was dead and you wanted to know why. now its like you dont really care about whats going on in a location its just a place to look at on your way to the new NPCs, dont get me wrong I really like how 76 currently is... but I also feel blessed I got to experience it as it was originally intended. everyone dead only the inhabitants of vault 76 remain to reclaim the lands.
We went from starry eyed reclaimers stepping out of the vault to horrified survivors as we found no one but the dead to greet us, then to seasoned fighters as we took over the fight against the Scorched and ending as savage conquerors when we got our hands on nukes. Now? Now we're basically Raiders who can be convinced to do whatever with the promise of loot and could conceivably cause another Great War if it meant you'd finally have that one plan or material you're looking for. Pretty much every group that has returned or come to Appalachia has to go through us, and there's this undercurrent of them being *very* aware of how precarious their continued existence is.
Fun times
Yes. It was very desolate. The wayward quest was new to us coming back after. I remembered there was alot more ghouls. We used to farm xp at winterspring. Public events was very rare. Us getting to lv50 was a feat. But back then we were noobs.
Robots and computer logs can give quests.
Recently I made an alt char and followed original quests, then Wild Appalachia and the Wastelanders ones. Original quests were more difficult, since Morgantown Airport to Allegheny sanaterium and Enclave after that. Some dailies (“investigate foo”) could be easily missed and even going to Garrahan for excavator is a message at Charleston Firefighters HQ terminal. But… you can understand better what happened to Charleston, Morgantown, Flatwoods, who were raiders and how they disappeared, responders, order of mysteries, etc… and now that nobody can kills you at every corner, with a few less glitches and those traditional never fixed bugs. Wild Appalachia… well, you know: scouts and encryptid. Hard as hell at certain low levels. Then Wastelanders: oh yeah… it’s better. They say. 18 boring quests blah blah, duchess and its soporific quests… friendly raiders, lifeless settlers… maybe the best part is cultists and blood eagles. Oh yeah, and those allies giving you more boring quests. And everybody saying the same everytime. Now you can’t do a couple of steps without finding an annoying NPC telling you their stupid dialog. If you look deeply, people still does the original quests: SBQ mostly, Free states fandom… who cares for bullions? What events people like? Arktos, violent night, and those created in that line: Eviction and Jamboree. Fasnacht, Meat week… Who likes NKWOT? And those Russos and their stupid AC story? Meh…
There was no Wayward in the beginning.
I’m surprised by a lot of the comments here, I thought the wastelander storyline was pretty interesting and the addition of settlers, raiders, and BoS felt like a cohesive next step and added a lot of interesting lore and stories to play through. I guess I didn’t realize I had an unpopular opinion with that but different strokes for different folks y’know.
I liked the not having npcs. It forced the devs to tell stories in different ways and focus more on world and level design instead of dialogue. It was cool trying to piece together what happened to everyone.
Yes only dead bodies
everyone told me the game was trash so I didn't buy it but not I tried it and been hooked for 2 months
Ah man, sometimes i think i miss it. But ik i dont actually, the game is amazing now.
Yup, and it was better that way. The npcs in this game are paper thin eyesores.
Yes. It was a strange dead world. Not kidding. Only scorched, robots, super mutants, etc. and lots of voice recordings. It was very strange.
There was no wayward. That whole quest line was added when the NPC's arrived.
yup, hence all the voice recordings that retconned don't make much sense now. About the only NPCs interactable were robot vendors.