Still playing 76

It's early 2010 and I'm trolling around in the Bethesda Softworks official forums during the hype storm of Fallout: New Vegas. The post that comes to mind today now that we have Fallout 76, is one that begged the question, does the game even need a story? Why not a game where we start on one end of the map and make it our goal to just survive? Well, eight years later they got their wish. And I am certain they are still complaining. Because that is what you do when you're in a gaming fandom- you complain.

Flash forward to today. I'm playing Fallout 76, wandering the zone that encompasses a majority of the beginning content. I call it the Green Zone, sandwiched between Toxic Valley to the north, and the Mole-Person ridden ash pit that makes up the south. I'd been relying on .308 ammo so much that now I was pretty much ammo starved and what ammo I did have I didn't carry that particular weapon. My inventory is almost always 90% full for some reason despite judicious management. Even with all of my weapons, which just get heavier the more you upgrade, that only dropped about maybe 40 to 50 off my weight. That still begs the question what all in my inventory is adding up to 134 pounds on my person unless it was all the crap in my Aid tab. My stash box is very soon to hit the 600 pound limit thanks to missiles and fusion cores eating up a decent chunk of weight.
I'm still enjoying the game, but I also feel I am not progressing, or at least not in the way I feel I should be. I'll be hitting level 50 soon, and level 30 enemies can still give me grief. Some of the quests at this point I can't really do by myself because they usually involve wandering where Satan himself wouldn't stick his pecker.
It hearkens back to my days in City of Heroes, where if by level 20 you weren't running with a couple of friends, you probably weren't going to be getting through the questlines easily. It was going to be a painful slog, but you might get to the end if you're stubborn and tenacious.
For the most part, I wander the realm, poking into ruins and hoping the game doesn't decide to have a Wendigo decide it wants a piece of me. I'm constantly on the search for materials to keep my weapons and armor repaired, because eventually they will break, and normally at the worst possible times, and frequently. I can't really rely on my Luck based perk card that grants a chance for my stuff to repair itself when I really need it to. Hunger and thirst are also an issue, and I'm always keeping an eye out for my next meal, be it a tin of dog food, or blackberries in the bushes to stave off the health damage.
This is my goal. Survive. Not so much hunting nukes or trying to get upgrades or to progress a story. My objective has become to not die and safely return to my camp. Maybe I specced wrong, and some lack of cohesion in my perks has left me squishy and vulnerable. Maybe the games just hard unless you grind out a lot of resources. I tend to favor single shot or semi-automatic weapons over the heavy miniguns and the like because you can make ammo last longer. Usually the Hunting Rifle upgraded and a sniper rifle. A combat rifle also gets the job done. I'm not exactly pulling the levels of damage some of my friends do, but they're already in the higher levels, so that's to be expected.

As an avid roleplayer, I found a community for it. Good people, but even they are slightly frustrated with the game. It's all voice chat, with the lack of a text chat to connect with players in the world. I wonder if this is by design to get players to go to each other and seek each other out. It creates an isolated and at times lonely atmosphere with only your radio to keep you company at the best of times. It fits the game they made.
But through it all, I keep thinking to myself...This could be better. This can be improved. And granted they've cleaned it up a lot since the B.E.T.A. The game doesn't crash when I log out anymore, they expanded the stash box. The usual tweaks and fixes. I see big things on the way