Shocker: People Who Have Actually Played Fallout 76 Absolutely Love It. Verified vs Unverified User Scores.

Posted on by theonehonestcritic

Bethesda finally launched their latest AAA title on Wednesday, as Fallout 76 hit physical and virtual shelves everywhere. Ever since its full reveal at E3, the game has been enveloped in controversy. Many Fallout fans were disappointed to hear that this is an online-only game with no (human) NPCs. Others were thrilled at the prospect of trying something new; exploring the wasteland with friends.

As of 3:00pm (PT) on Thursday, the user score for Fallout 76 on Metacritic was 3.2 for PC and an abysmal 2.9 on PS4. The game has been bombarded by users giving it the worst possible score one can give on the site. However, reviews with more detail about their experience (more likely to be actual players), seemed to consistently give the game a high score (8 or above).

User scores anywhere are to be taken with a very large grain of salt. Anyone can post ratings, even if they don’t own the game or have ever played it. Verified user reviews like those found on Steam (which also feature playtime) are much more reliable.

“As you can see, there is an enormous divide in user score between verified owners and unverified owners.”

So, as we’ve done in the past here at The Honest Critic, we dove deeper to take a look at the discrepancies between verified and unverified ratings. We collected roughly 1,000 samples from verified purchases on Amazon and Best Buy. We also collected the same number of user scores from Metacritic. Both were collected on the PC platform. Our findings can be seen in the chart below.

Fallout 76 Average User Score_ Verified vs Unverified.png

As you can see, there is an enormous divide in user score between verified owners and unverified owners. This lends further to the premise that this Fallout game, like many previous Call of Duty games, is getting automatic negative feedback simply because of an enraged portion of their fanbase.

Let’s take a look at and confirm/debunk the most common complaints.

1. “There are no NPCs.”

This is false. There are NPCs, they are just not humans. This was intentional; every human seen in the game is supposed to be a real person. NPCs exist in the form of robots, scorched, ghouls, and more.

2. “There is no story. “

This is also false. The game features an entire main story along with hundreds of side quests, just like previous Fallout games.

3. The graphics look the same as Fallout 4. 

This is true. It is clear that the game used the same engine as Fallout 4. That being said, however, this is a midcycle game (like New Vegas was) and still looks beautiful.

4. The game is littered with game-breaking bugs. 

This is uncertain. Our experience so far has been completely bug-free. I have heard from others about annoying bugs as well, but no doomsday bugs like you will hear about in some of these user reviews.

“…based on the data we have gathered and the people we have actually spoken to, one thing is clear: in an overwhelming majority, those who have actually played the game absolutely love it.”

We have not put nearly enough time into Fallout 76 to declare an official score (about 8 hours) but based on the data we have gathered and the people we have actually spoken to, one thing is clear: in an overwhelming majority, those who have actually played the game (including us) absolutely love it. 

We’ll be sure to get an official score and review up in the next few days. Make sure to leave your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for stopping by!

Derek Hayden

Part Time Contributor

Burbank, CA

23 thoughts on “Shocker: People Who Have Actually Played Fallout 76 Absolutely Love It. Verified vs Unverified User Scores.”

  1. FINALLY. I was thinking the same thing. I had friends who hadn’t played it ripping it to shreds, but my friends who had said it was some of the most fun they’ve ever had in an online game. Thanks for doing this!!

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  2. The game was never not going to be hung up and proclaimed terrible A Bethesda Fallout, an Online spin off and different core mechanics. Nothing Bethesda actually did for this game was ever going to make it good enough for some people not to act like it’s a mistake. Going by the trend of these things, the most vocal hate will die off soon, people hating it will actually pick it up and the majority will, if not love it, find they can enjoy it and Bethesda will keep pumping out updates and DLC, if they’re quick and smart, that ensures it keeps a steady community that should last for a few years, with the usual drops and raises in player levels… Either that or they mess up badly somehow and have a massive drop off quickly that will hurt them going forward. Bethesda has never made a game that flopped before, inspite of issues some have with recent releases, so who knows

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    1. Thanks for your input. I agree; a lot of the people currently blindly hating on it are just tailing the hate wagon and will likely pick it up and try it eventually. Bethesda rarely disappoints. With updates and improvements, this will go from a great game to an excellent game.

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      1. But that hate wagon is based mostly on “It’s not fallout 3/NV/4”. It’s like they want a carbon copy of a previous game without any form of evolution of the gameplay. If metacritic would validate owner copy first you would see 1/10th of the amount reviews that it has now 🙂

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  3. I really appreciate a validated, realistic scoring. It’s not fair what people are giving Fallout 76 without playing it. That being said, I’d have to give it a strong 5, after 20+ hours. I came into the beta and the launch really wanting to love it, and excited for it. I loved Fallout 4, and I’m a longtime fallout fan. But the game starts to feel too restrictive to progress around level 25 or so? I can’t store anything else in my CAMP, I can’t do much without over-encumberance, you can’t build more than a small structure in CAMP, and anything larger, you can’t decorate or make defenses. Blueprints are even more limited than the building limit. I feel like I can’t do much more? And I know some people can, and have played much farther, but I just don’t know how. Do they not collect junk? Do they not build anything? It’s very concerning and strips most of what I love in a Fallout game, and what I loved in Fallout 4’s newer features.
    What keeps me content (hopefully) is that I believe they will fix a lot of the bugs I’ve experienced and perhaps the features will improve as well.

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  4. It’s good to know somebody does his research right. I absolutely love this game. It has it’s shares of bugs, but like you say, nothing that prevents you to have a lot of fun. For a guy that has all settlements in survival mode in Fallout 4, I did a lot of exploring and scavenging. Fallout 76 gives me exactly what I wanted. Lots of exploring to find hidden stories to add to the lore. There’s lots of reading to do and I know this will not appeal to everyone but I love it. I’m just happy we have an online Fallout game that we can play with friends. I feel Bethesda has done a good enough foundation to start with. I can’t wait to see what they do with this game.

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  6. Me and the kids are having a blast with this game. Two of my adult children (no longer living at home) and I play online together which is a great way to hang out and smack down some enemies LOL. Seriously great game, don’t get the bad reviews. Of course there are a few glitches, but for us they make the game more fun.

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  7. So far I’ve put 40 hours into Fo76 and I’m happy that I bought it – amount of bugs so far have been severely limited (got stuck once in the dam building under the stairs, some floating rocks/landscape in faraway areas) and tbh the worst bug so far I’ve had was a hermit crab spawning 1 meter away..

    So in all honest I love it and I do hope that Bethesda will spend a lot more love and time on expanding the universe.

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  9. I’m just curious cause I checked Amazon and right now it has 31 positive and 79 critical reviews. With this kind of ratio can you really say it’s overwhelmingly positive?

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  10. I’m completely, totally in love with this game. I’ve been playing since the early B.E.T.A, with my own fair share of hours. The biggest flaw, though, is the game is absolutely easy to progress through, then it just becomes an endless farm for supplies and legendary gear. There are some issues mechanically with the some game features (C.AM.P mostly) and other limitations. Everything will get ironed out overtime though, but until then, I do not think this game was honestly quite worth the $60 price tag yet.

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  11. A HUGE THANK YOU FOR THIS! From day to day I was more f**** up by people that didn’t even play the game keep complaining and bitching over the same things over and over again. Actually I think this is the result of false expectations on Fallout 76. Many of these people expected Fallout 76 as a Fallout 5 with an epic main story and character developement like in the other titles. But this was never the intention and said. Sadly a lot of non players get influence so quick with negativity and won’t make they own experiences. Had a lot of discussions with *Fans from the beginning* shitting about this game as a betrayal on them. wtf? that everyone hates it? – yeah, obvsly not. No one expected to get another fallout adventure so soon. I personally was very happy and im curious whats coming the next months. Thank you for this 🙂 greetings from germany

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  12. Have been playing since launch, almost everyday. It’s impossible to put down. Love playing solo and love playing with friends. And everyone I have played with loves the game. This mob mentality is ridiculous. Hundreds of people who haven’t touched the game rate it a zero… wtf. I’m super happy someone made an article about this, thank you so much.

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    1. Our data was taken from US, UK, and AU sites, based on ownership to population ratio. I’m guessing this person didn’t factor those in. We are working on posting a spreadsheet of the data, but even then it’s likely haters will deny it.

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