It depresses me greatly thinking about it. For the first time in years, we're getting some fresh content, and some people, even old, venerable fans, especially the ones at the Site-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, are already throwing in baseless criticisms simply because it's being made by Bethesda. I understand it, but we all know why they're well known. They sharpened their hatred to a point, and have been stirring in it for so long they've become glittering gems of anger.

Most people ignore it, but they have so much history with the franchise. The oldest fans of this series, the second oldest fansite even, constantly trashes Bethesda and their fans unprovoked. They refer to anyone excited for 4 as "[censored] guzzling idiots", who only eat dumbed-down trash. They say "It's absolute FACT that a product is directly inferior to the ones before it, but these dumb [censored]s keep throwing their money at a big greedy corporation that does nothing but svck the blood from any franchise it sinks it's teeth into. Bethesda has no shame."

It's just depressing to hear fans say this. Especially the majority from a place with so much history.

The franchise would've either remained a niche series talked only by old-time cRPG enthusiasts for a few years and largely forgotten with little sales success, become the abomination original interplay wanted it to be, or just stuck in video-game purgatory forever. Now, the series has thousands and thousands of fans, with fan-movies, fan art, swathes of fanfiction, and its success in the AAA and Mobile market can even allow it to have side-games that are just like the old ones. Yet, the old fans still hold a critical eye to everything, -everything- Bethesda does. "Pre-War Vertibirds are a lore break!" "Tim Cain said FEV isn't supposed to be on the East Coast!" "The 50's theme is [censored] and overdone! It was never supposed to be this blown up!" Except none of this actually breaks -anything- to any extent. But nothing Bethesda can do is right to their eyes.

I just wish we were more united as a fandom. Agree to disagree, Bethesda can make mistakes, but so does everyone. The series as a whole is better the path it took though. As fans, we should grow up and learn to get along. I understand not liking the way the series went and giving up on it, but seeing something you don't like and OBSESSING over how angry you are about it is another story.

I suspect this will be locked but...
Just ignore it. Don't take things people say so personally. It's ok to criticize the game and you can distinguish ones who are doing it constructively and those that just don't have a life and are bashing something simply because they can.

I know one of them, who makes his home in the Fallout: New Vegas Steam discussions, he's kinda like the old guy telling youngsters to get off his lawn, and the youngsters being the Bethesda and Fallout 3 and 4 fans who post there, and the old guy, being him. In his mind, It's just Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas. Three and four are seen as horrible to him.

some people just can't let go.

Yeah, I know Two Bears.

I've had several encounters with him, and none of them pleasant.

Not that I have anything against his opinion, but he's so critical and demeaning to people (Especially to a friend of mine.) That it's inexcusable. He boasts about how he's never going to give a cent to Bethesda or post on the Fallout 3/4 Steam Discussions, then he goes there anyways to tell people that Fallout 4 is going to be a terrible RPG and that it's a further ruination of the Fallout franchise, all while spewing anti-Bethesda rhetoric constantly while his little band of admirers parrot everything he says. God forbid you want to take a neutral stance on the situation, and he'll tell you about how ignorant you are.

Again, it depresses me. Here, we have a paragon of Fallout knowledge, using it to belittle people and complain.

I think people are entitled to their own opinions. Good or bad. Not much use in complaining about complaints.

pretty much. I'm not complaining about FO4, and I think it kinda silly if people do, as they would be complaining about something that nobody has played. I'm sure FO4 will have some good points and some things that will make me cringe. Final judgement will be made after I crank out many game hours.

Exactly

The day Fallout 4 was officially announced, one of the very first Fallout-4 related threads I saw on the Fallout New Vegas Steam forums (Fallout 4 had yet to get it's own Steam forums) was simply titled "Fallout 4 is gonna svck". I didn't bother clicking on it, but I thought it was funny how people were hating the game literally before we knew anything about it.

Some people are just so petty.

You did the right thing by ignoring the thread.

So yeah, I'll have to lock this. We're getting into cross-site trash-talking here, which while not exactly a capital punishment here, is still against our forum's rules. I really only deal with what occurs on this forum and honestly - this is by the far the most laid-back pre-release we've seen for a game, at least since I've been a member on here. I started coming around here when Fallout 3 was first announced, and the forum here was distinctly more... combative, as two kind of disparate fanbases attempted to merge. We didn't always play nice. I've seen a number of releases since I became a moderator, and even the more controversial announcements have been met more philosophically than I was expecting.

So I don't think it's so bad as all that. Anyway, if I can take off the moderator hat for a moment:

A lot of people enjoyed the original Fallout games. We don't all see eye to eye about everything, and contrary to popular belief we don't all come from the same places. I bought Fallout 1 the day it released (the gaming news outlets I followed at the time made it seem almost like the game had been custom-tailored specifically to me, and the end product certainly didn't do anything to dissuade me of that hypothesis.) I dropped one of my college courses back in '98 (if I'm remembering my dates correctly) because it was taking too much time away from Fallout 2.

So I'm a... "dedicated" fan of the original games, to say the least. They're still on my Steam library (the old discs are a little worn out, to say the least.) I'm kind of done replaying through them, at least for the time being, but my last run was maybe a year or two ago - I'm not remembering them through "mystical nostalgia glasses," despite that seeming to be the default assumption about us older fans. In college, I picked up a BFA and meant to minor in game design, but kind of ran short on money - Interplay and Fallout specifically were a primary source of that inspiration. That was a company I dreamed of working for, because they made the games I wanted to be making.

I'd never heard of NMA, actually, until after I'd started posting on here for a time. I met other fellow fans of the original Fallout games on here, and it's not like I was the only one who'd missed the memo. There were people who gave older fans a bad name, and by the time I created an account on here it seemed like the majority of the Bethesda fan base had already made up their minds about us. I do not remember this forum as a particularly welcoming place, overall, for anyone who would dare have some apprehension about the direction Bethesda was taking "our" franchise.

The old-time fans are the same as any other group of fans everywhere else - highly diverse, segmented, and with at least a hundred different staunchly-defended opinions about every grain of sand on the beach. Some of us have different opinions on the direction Bethesda has taken the series, sure. But that's nothing new or unique - I'm sure when the next Elder Scrolls gets announced there's going to be an absolute revolt if it's not going to have beast legs, spears, and werewolves in them.

When I came to this forum shortly after Fallout 3 was announced it was to find out more about the game and engage in some fun and spirited debates about the game. To dissect every single piece of the most minor mechanic and compare apples to oranges. I've encountered some not terribly fun or happy people while doing that - some loved the old Fallout games and we couldn't see eye to eye, and just as many took any perceived slight against Beth as a call to arms.

In the end, it's just a video game, though. I really enjoy my chosen hobby, and actually have some deeply personal attachments to some aspects of both the hobby and my fellow nerds. Us old-timers are not a homogeneous mix of trolls who can't accept anything new, nor does everything Bethesda put out glitter with gold.

tldr - people on the internet are mean, no matter what they choose to galvanize around, both... "sides" are equally to blame for any lingering hostility, but I think most of us (video game fans in general) just like having fun with our particular choice of leisure activities and want to discuss that hobby with other like-minded individuals.