Wouldn’t it be nice?: Fallout 76 BETA review

November 2, 2018 • 11:00 am

by Grania (obviously)

Fair warning: I’ve played nearly all Bethesda Game Studio‘s RPGs (not to be confused with Bethesda Softworks) and I like them. I like them a lot. The games in their catalog of Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles are not perfect examples of role-playing games; but in terms of creating big, open worlds where the player is free to explore a richly detailed and enormous landscape for hundreds (or thousands) of hours, I can’t think of anyone who does it better than they do.

Fallout 76 is a bit of an anomaly in their library. It’s been about the most controversial thing they’ve done since Emperor Tiber Septim retconned the province of Cyrodiil from a jungle into a temperate grassland. But it is, for better or worse, what Bethesda does best:  a whole new world full of stories and places for the player to traverse and experience.

First of all, it’s not a traditional single-player RPG, although it has common elements. It’s kind of like playing in survival or hardcore mode but pretty much all the NPCs (non-player characters) are actually other players. Second, it’s not exactly the Fallout universe experience you get from their previous games. Fallout is a post-apocalyptic series of stories in a world that has been devastated by nuclear war – it’s intentionally stark and somber.  Fallout 76 is goofy as is immediately clear when you click on the game trailer. (The video is live-action for reasons of extra goof. Nah, it’s live-action to show that it really is going to be you and your friends out there.) I’m as pleased as anyone to see 10mm SMGs back in the game, but that sort of combat tactic is just asking for Dogmeat to accidentally trip you.

Click through to the official live-action trailer

It’s not that the other Fallout games don’t have their own brand of wackiness, but the humor there tends to be intrinsic to dialogue options or consequences of potential choices you might make.

Fallout 4: what should you say when you are talking to atom-worshiping cultists?

This brings us to a serious question: why did Bethesda decide to bring out an online survival game, especially when people are waiting for Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield to arrive. The answers are (probably):

  1. To make more money
  2. Use the Fallout 4 assets one last time to achieve #1.
  3. This possibly test-drives features they have in mind for future games – Starfield maybe?
  4. Turning one of their staple universes into an on-line game worked well in the case of ESO even though Bethesda Game Studios were not the developers of that title; so this is an attempt to do something similar for Fallout.
  5. Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield are far from being ready and bringing out this title buys them more time.
  6. World-building is probably Bethesda’s strongest Special Ability, and this game probably relies on it more than any of their other titles.

Fans of single-player RPGs are not necessarily keen on online RPGs and the main reason is not actually because of ‘griefing’ (that’s anti-social behavior of badly-behaved maladjusts who should be fired into the sun at birth, for you normal readers out there). The real reason is that the ‘winner’ of an online game tends to be the person who can put in the most hours right now, as opposed to the single-player version where you can put in the time you want when it suits you. This means that people who have real-life commitments (like a job) are at a disadvantage. This doesn’t have to be a problem of course, for example there are many Minecraft multi-player servers out there where a group of people play amicably enough for years on end without any particular penalty to those who put in fewer hours. Only time will tell of that will be the fate of Fallout 76.

During BETA testing we are probably seeing players at their sociable best: everyone is new and more interested in exploring for themselves, and those of us who signed up for BETA access are less likely to be the aforementioned maladjusts.

The real question of course is: is it any good?

The graphics are better than Fallout 4 even though they are recognizably F4 assets. Server performance wasn’t bad at all even with a group of people in the same area. There were a couple of laggy moments at the end of “Events” (special group quests that are area dependent), but nothing to make the game unplayable. Graphics aren’t everything of course, – in fact they are the least important thing – but this is the most lush and least bleak Fallout game I’ve seen. That in itself is going to raise eyebrows, as the landscape looks more like the Garden of Eden than America after the bombs dropped.

I played for a couple of hours on Tuesday night when BETA went live for PC players. It’s addictive but I have work in the morning (you see how real life can be a problem?), so I had to curtail my travels after 3.5 hours (-ish). A symptom of everyone being in the same area because we’re pretty much all starting out at the same time, is that too many people in the same place together means that there is a little bit of a bottleneck to use crafting stations. Certain containers do seem to respawn after a while, but in general moving through an area by yourself or with a coordinated group of companions is going to be preferable to running around with a group of strangers. I suspect this will get better as people spread out around the map. I kind of miss Dogmeat already though.

Playing with a group of random strangers on the same map is a little weird. It may not be an issue in the US, but here in Europe I found myself playing with a lot of people who speak a different language. Also, you can hear people through the walls if you are in close proximity. At times I wasn’t sure if I was hearing a person talking or hearing an in-game monster stalking me. That’s going to take some getting used to. You can communicate via a series of weird emoticons and poses, but I haven’t investigated that part of the menu yet. You can also join in on group quests that seem to occur regularly. (I was the lunatic who took out several Protectrons and crazed Mr Handys armed only with a walking cane with barbed wire wrapped around it. Cowards wiser explorers sniped from under the foliage at a distance.)

The crafting aspect of the game has been expanded, although much of what you can craft is now dependent on whether you have found the recipe. Some of these recipes will appear when you level up, I assume some of them are SPECIAL (your personal chosen stats) dependent. Although it is essentially a revamp of Fallout 4‘s crafting system, it’s far more detailed as you will now have to make sure you drink and eat as well as heal yourself from the bites of irradiated squirrels (yes, the rumor that squirrel meat was essentially soylent green is just that – a now proven rumor. We all know that strange meat is soylent green).

I haven’t investigated the camp / home building menu yet, however it seems that if you are hoping to re-create your Sanctuary Mega Fortress, that’s not going to happen as the build limit is apparently very small. That, I think, is going to be a major issue for some players; and not without reason either – the stated mission of the game is essentially to rebuild America. That’s going to take a very long time if we’re going to do it one-room-shack-per-person at a time.

Some weapons and armor are level dependent too, for example you can find a 10mm pistol at any level, but can’t use it until you are Level 5. People will find that annoying. It seems to be the new way of incorporating leveled gear into the game, it’s probably to prevent one lucky low-leveled player from overpowering other beginners. I don’t know if I like it though – I’m not sure yet.

There are lots of quests, almost too many at the outset of the game. Although there are virtually no NPCs in the game unless you count Vendortrons, quests arrive through journals and broadcasts and notes. Many are area dependent and some appear to be similar to the random encounters and radiant quest systems used in previous Fallout games. Eventually though, you will probably want to ignore the quests for a while and head off and explore. So far the quests don’t seem to be particularly gripping, but I was barely out of the starter area so I can’t claim to have a good overview of them yet. Although there is a ‘main’ questline, I get the feeling though that there isn’t going to be any grand mission on the level of finding your kidnapped child or saving the Wasteland.

Do I have any concerns?

Yes. So far the quests are a weak point and as a (most likely) single-player I am worried that this game may not provide me with the same sort of lure that previous Fallout games have. Once I have explored the map, will there be any reason to hang around? (I fear this game is going to miss not having a Fawkes or a Nick Valentine to regale you with acerbic commentary on your shortcomings.) We’ll have to see.

Will you have fun?

So far my verdict is: if you enjoy playing Minecraft on a shared server, you’ll enjoy this. If you have a group of friends to play with, you will have a lot of fun with this. If you like playing survival mode in an open world, you will love this.

Can you play alone? Yes, you absolutely can, Bethesda appear to have taken to heart the concerns of single-players and made sure that you can head out alone if you want. If you do run into my bleach-haired* character in-game, do come and say hi. She’ll be the one wielding a machete.

* Hair may or may not actually be bleached and the machete may have been exchanged for a Gauss rifle. The name will stay the same though.

 

 

 

 

Note to readers

November 2, 2018 • 10:15 am

As I’ll be gone for about ten days, I ask, as usual, for readers to refrain from sending me emails—unless they point out errors or typos in posts (and I won’t be doing many posts anyway). I have trouble keeping up with the volume of email on normal days, and when I’m traveling it’s nearly impossible.

Please hold onto your contribution until I return and am posting again from Chicago.

Thank you!

Evolution societies issue misleading statement about sex

November 2, 2018 • 9:30 am

In my opinion, scientific societies shouldn’t issue political or ideological statements except under two conditions:

1.) The government is trying to gut science or has other policies that would impede our understanding of nature or the functioning of the scientific society. (This includes, I suppose, policies that wreck the environment when organismal biology is concerned, for without an environment and its species there’s nothing to study.)

2.) The government is misusing scientific data to enact policy, in which case a scientific society (without endorsing or denigrating the policy) should correct that knowledge—when that knowledge is in the ambit of the Society. This is one function of the National Academies of Science: to inform government policy with scientific data.

There may be other circumstances for societies to intervene, but the two areas above are on my mind as I write this.

What I do oppose is scientific societies taking political or ideological stands as if they were a person. That’s because there’s surely a diversity of views among members of a society, but mostly because the purpose of scientific societies is to promote the doing of science and advancing our understanding of nature, not to function as political entities. Examples of statements that I think are misguided include endorsing or denigrating political candidates, or making statementsthat science and religion are compatible (several science organizations have made such statements).

It is, of course, fine for individuals within societies to express their views on political and social issues—but not as representatives of societies. A while back I was President of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), and, as such, thought that the SSE shouldn’t take stands that didn’t have anything to do with evolution.

But now it has, opposing the Trump administration’s proposed policy that gender must be defined as a binary, based on the appearance of an individual’s genitals and as recognized on that individual’s birth certificate. I disagree with this policy because gender, which to me means the sexual identity claimed by an individual (including transsexuals, those whose identity doesn’t correspond to their biological sex, transgendered people, polysexual people, and so on) doesn’t correspond to biological sex in many cases, and there’s no reason not to respect an individual’s self-definition (except, perhaps, in sports).

My view, which I’ve explained before, is that while gender may form more or less a continuum, although there are still self-identity modes at “male” and “female”, it forms more of a continuum than does biological sex, which is almost completely binary (again, male and female), but is also strongly bimodal,  with just 1 or 2% of individuals falling between the male and female spikes. (See my recent post “Sex in humans may not be binary, but it’s surely bimodal.”)

The Council (the officers) of the SSE, however, has issued a statement—almost certainly motivated by liberal political views—that claims to show that the Trump administration’s policy is not supported by science. In so doing, it conflates gender and sex, and winds up making the specious claim that “sex should be viewed as a continuum.”

Well, gender can be viewed that way if you wish, but biological sex, especially in humans, cannot be viewed as a continuum. Here’s the SSE’s statement (my emphasis):

Policy: Letter RE: Scientific Understanding of Sex and Gender

We, the Council of the Society for the Study of Evolution, strongly oppose attempts by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to claim that there is a biological basis to defining gender as a strictly binary trait (male/female) determined by genitalia at birth. Variation in biological sex and in gendered expression has been well documented in many species, including humans, through hundreds of scientific articles. Such variation is observed at both the genetic level and at the individual level (including hormone levels, secondary sexual characteristics, as well as genital morphology). Moreover, models predict that variation should exist within the categories that HHS proposes as “male” and “female”, indicating that sex should be more accurately viewed as a continuum. Indeed, experiments in other organisms have confirmed that variation in traits associated with sex is more extensive than for many other traits. Beyond the false claim that science backs up a simple binary definition of sex or gender, the lived experience of people clearly demonstrates that the genitalia one is born with do not define one’s identity. Diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans.  As a Society, we welcome this diversity and commit to serving and protecting members regardless of their biological sex, gender identity or expression, or sexual orientation.

Sorry, but in most animals, at least the ones I’m familiar with, and those includes H. sapiens, has two sexes, male and female. There is a low frequency of individuals who don’t fit into these classes at birth, but the frequency is so low that, for all practical purposes, sex can be regarded as a binary. (To be more accurate, it’s “strongly bimodal”.) And there’s a reason for this: evolution favors well-demarcated sexes that can recognize each other for purposes of reproduction. That means male vs female genitalia and male vs female gametes, all produced by male vs female chromosome constitution. The XX/XY (or ZW/ZZ) chromosomal sex-determination system evolved to promote the production of a sexual binary and a roughly equal sex ratio.

Divergence from this system, while it has occurred in some animals—in some reptiles, for instance, sex is determined by the incubation temperature of eggs)—is maladaptive. A male duck that has a penis and male coloration, and has ZZ chromosomes (in birds the male is the sex with identical sex chromosomes), but who also produces eggs rather than sperm, or no sperm at all, would be selected against, as it wouldn’t leave offspring. Likewise if said duck has sperm but female genitalia and so cannot inseminate females, it’s an evolutionary dead end.

Every day during my research career I examined thousands of flies, and I found exceptions to the male/female binary only very rarely: once every couple of months. Yes, there were some males who had testes but lacked sperm, but those, too, were selected against. And as it is with flies, so it is with humans. For flies, though they don’t have self-identified gender, do have biological sexes.

As for the models predicting that “variation should exist within males and females”, I don’t know which models they’re talking about, but it’s easy to show that deviations like those mentioned above would be maladaptive.  The whole mess that the SSE has gotten itself into involves conflating gender and sex, and then pretending that sex is “a continuum”. Well, if you squint very hard you can say that. But the implication that biological sex is not strongly bimodal—and that the vast majority of individuals are not born as “male” and “female”—is just wrong and unscientific.

Of course people’s “lived experience” (that phrase, of course, is social-justice jargon, as there cannot be “unlived experience”) does justify more of a continuum for gender than for sex. But criticizing the Trump administration’s proposal, which is really about gender and not sex, is in my view not the brief of a society like the SSE. And what particularly bothers me is that the statement above pretends to use science, which in humans shows the opposite of a “continuum” of sex, to show that there is indeed such a continuum. Here we have an example of ideology trumping—excuse the pun—the scientific data.

The point is that we shouldn’t use science to strongly buttress a moral stand: in this case the proper view that individuals identifying as other than their birth sex should be allowed to do so and above all should not be the object of bigotry and vilification, but treated with dignity and given the same opportunities as anyone else. (Again, sports is a possible exception).  For what if sex WAS a pure 100% binary, with everyone easily recognizable as a male or female using the criteria above, and with no exceptions. Would we then have to treat individuals who identify in ways not corresponding to their biological sex differently? I don’t think so. Such is the danger of resting morality and ideology so firmly on biology. But in this case the biology doesn’t even support the ideology with respect to sex.

I note that, at the link above, the Presidents of the SSE and of two other organismal biology societies, the American Society of Naturalists and The Society of Systematic Biologists, have sent a copy of a nearly identical statement as a letter to Alex Azar, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which would be implementing this new policy. As I said, the government’s policy is misguided, but so is the act of scientists using the authority of science but in a misguided way.

The statement that “diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans” gives the game away. First, it’s not so true for some traits like sex in humans, and, most egregiously, it’s a prime example of the naturalistic fallacy: because diversity is supposedly ubiquitous, it must be good, and should be promoted in society. Scientific societies should not be in the business of buttressing social policy by saying that it corresponds to nature. If we want to either promote gender diversity or refrain from criticizing it, we should not be looking to science for a justification.

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 2, 2018 • 7:30 am

This will be the last dollop of photos until mid-November, but if you’ve sent them to me, they will appear eventually.

Today Reader Tony Eales from Brisbane has some great photos from Brunei. His notes and IDs are indented.

So I went to Brunei as a paying volunteer on a taxonomic expedition with a group called Taxon Expeditions to spend 10 days in the rainforest at the Kuala Belalong Field Studies Centre run by the University of Brunei Darussalam. For me this was to be the macrophotography trip of a lifetime. Unfortunately my camera lasted all of one day. I managed to coax some more photos out of it by the last few days and of course I had my mobile phone but it was pretty devastating. I say devastating but of course I realise it was a great privilege to even get to go, and I had an unforgettable time. Camera woes notwithstanding, I amassed quite a few photos of the jungle wildlife that I’d like to share. Let’s get the boring old vertebrates out of the way first.

Mammals were thin on the ground with only brief glimpses of Long-tailed Macaques (Macaca fascicularis), the distant sound of gibbons, and regular evening microbats however on a tree near the dining room every day there was a frantic mammalian presence, a least pygmy squirrel (Exilisciurus exilis).

The squirrel:

There were a large number of reptiles and amphibians. The most common were various geckos. In the forests at night Cyrtodactylus pubisulcus (Grooved Bent-toed Geckos) were common.

On the wall of the accommodation I saw this small gecko. I would have just said Common Malaysian House Gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus), which are quite variable, but I’ve never seen one with the kind of webbing you can see between the belly and the thigh, so I’m not so sure.

Near the kitchen lived a resident Tokay Gecko (Gekko gecko). This one however was caught in the forest by the visiting frog expert.

There was a small pond near where the water tanks were and this always had many File-eared tree frogs (Polypedates otilophus). A large spectacular frog that we also observed mating.

 

On one of the night walks we went to the nearby small stream and there were several Staurois sp. Known as “splash frogs”

However there were many others that I just don’t know —even the family [JAC: can readers help here?]

 

Friday: Hili dialogue

November 2, 2018 • 6:30 am

This evening I’ll be flying over the Atlantic, which I seem to do a lot these days. But no complaints here! It’s Friday, November 2, 2018, and National Deviled Egg Day. (Why do they invoke Satan in this dish?) It’s also All Souls’ Day and the Rastafarian Holiday celebrating the coronation of Haile Selasse, seen as the messiah in that religion. Finally, it’s a UN jawbreaker of a holiday: International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.

It’s the last day of the Day of the Dead in Mexico, which should really be called Three Days of the Dead. Google has a Doodle (click on screenshot):

On November 2, North and South Dakota were admitted at the 39th and 40th U.S. states. North Dakota is, in fact, the only U.S. state I’ve never visited. WHY???  On this day in 1917, according to Wikipedia, “The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the clear understanding ‘that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities'”. On this day in 1920, the radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh became the first commercial station in the U.S. It’s still broadcasting nearly a century later.

On November 2, 1947, Howard Hughes flew the “Spruce Goose”, the largest fixed wing airplane ever built. The Hughes H-4 Hercules had a wingspan of  flew for just 26 seconds at a height of 70 feet, and never flew again.  Its wingspan was bigger than a football field: 320 ft 11 in (97.54 m)! Still in good condition, it’s displayed at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.  I must see it one day.  Here’s its maiden (and only) flight (you can see more, including how it was moved to Oregon, in this video).

On November 2, 1959, in the famous Quiz Show Scandal, “Twenty-One” contestant Charles Van Doren told a Congressional committee that the show had given him the questions and answers in advance.  He resigned from his professorship at Columbia University and became a writer and editor, living in relative obscurity. On this day in 1960, in the case of R v. Penguin Books Ltd in the UK, the publisher was found not guilty of obscenity for publishing Lady Chatterly’s Lover. On this day in 1983, Ronald Reagan signed the bill creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Finally, it was on this blessed day two years ago that the Chicago Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians to win the World Series, ending a 108-year Series dry streak—the longest such streak in major league baseball history. Holy cow!!!

Notables born on November 2 include Daniel Boone (1734), Marie Antoinette (1755), James K. Polk (1795), Warren G. Harding (1865) and k.d. lang (1961).

Those who died on this day include Jenny Lind (1887), George Bernard Shaw (1950), Peter Debye (1966; Nobel Laureate), Eliot Porter (1990), and Acker Bilk (2014). Here’s a lovely photograph by Porter, a trained scientist who also worked at Harvard:

Blue-Throated Hummingbird, Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona (May 1959)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, cosy in her nest on the veranda, has missed an opportunity.

Cyrus: Did you see the bird on the verandah?
Hili: Yes, but it saw me as well and it escaped.
In Polish:
Cyrus: Czy widziałaś tego ptaszka na werandzie?
HilI: Tak, ale on mnie też widział i uciekł.
Tweet O’ the Day, from a never-Trump Republican (h/t: Grania):

Sent by reader Barry: a tiger gets its tooth pulled. That dude is either brave or he’s pals with the tiger.

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1057753527760642050

From Heather Hastie: The kakapos are getting frisky on their island:

And Paul Bronks (via Heather) comes up with another thrilling cat tweet:

https://twitter.com/BoringEnormous/status/1049901707621228544

Tweets from Grania:  Snoopy’s dream has finally come true!

https://twitter.com/ZonePhysics/status/1048959644637519873

Well, I’ll be. . . .

Read the thread to show why Chivers is right and the alarmist report is somewhat misleading:

A tweet emitted by Matthew on the day the clocks were set back. His cats are confused.

More from Matthew. Did you know kangaroos can swim, and in a very unusual way?

Is this cat really bathing, or just stupid and trying to get a drink?

Well, I know this is nature red in fang and chelicera, but I’m not happy about it.

From Neil Shubin; this building, Culver Hall, is next to mine, and yes, the Virginia creeper is especially colorful this year:

Broken relationship #8

November 1, 2018 • 2:30 pm

I continue with another exhibit from Zagreb’s Museum of Broken Relationships, a truly remarkable place.  Each object was donated by someone involved in a “broken relationship” (mostly romances but some parent/child relationships), and the donor wrote an explanation of the circumstances.

Some of the exhibits make you feel like a voyeur, or a bit uncomfortable—except that the donors want their objects to be seen and their stories told. This is one of them, part of the panoply of humanity.

 

 

 

A reader’s take on why medieval artists couldn’t paint cats

November 1, 2018 • 1:15 pm

For many months I’ve been urging reader (and writer) Laurie Sindoni (half of the staff of Theo, the coffee-drinking cat), to examine the question of why medieval artists couldn’t paint cats. I’ve given examples on this site of ludicrously substandard cat art—and it isn’t just medieval art, either. For some reason, artists up to the 19th century couldn’t paint cats, either!

Now, on her site A Classicist Writes, Laurie has finally come to grips with this most vexing question. Click on the screenshot below (note the nice dedication to yours truly) to see her various theories and then her ultimate explanation for bad cat art.

I won’t give away the ending, but to tempt you I show two photos from her analysis: Penis Cat and Loofah Cat: