Edit at the bottom: TL:DR It's better.

I've put in my time. 91 hours on Steam and some 20+ hours on the bethesda launcher.

I have a laundry list of complaints, the one that seems to be the biggest issue however is the server disconnects. In the last 20ish hours of play I had 82 interruptions due to server issues.

That is an average of being disconnected every 15ish minutes.

Now this will cause a few problems. If you are in an interior of a building (a dungeon) and you are disconnected you will be shoved outside when yo load back in with the enemies re-spawned but all of the resources you spent exploring the place spent. Ammo, Stims, chems, armor degradation, weapon degradation are all the same the moment you DC'd but your progress will be lost. I was in the middle of a long quest where I had to fight through some 100+ enemies alone and when I got to the end I was DC'd right before I was able to complete it. When I loaded in, not only were all the enemies now alive, ammo spent, armor broken, no stims left, but the quest was also broken to bits and pieces. To a point where I had to remove the quest from my quest log and start the whole quest tree over.

Now, there are times this worked out in my favor. Am I over-encumbered and want a quick way out? just wait and you'll be DC'd and you will load outside the building. Did i get stuck behind some trash or in the geometry of the game, or sink halfway through the floor because the game was out of sync? Just wait and you will be unstuck and back outside.

Now onto the other glaring issue. The UI is the same. Since fallout-3 it's been the same. Which is fine in a single player experience where pulling it up pauses the game. But in this game where everything is moving while you are reading a note, switching guns, eating food or drinking water because you are dehydrated and starving every 5 minutes, you get smashed by a deathclaw or Super mutant missile. It's clunky, old and not conducive to online play.

Atoms were not hard to come by. 91 hours of play and I received nearly 1900 atoms from weekly and daily challenges. That's just shy of $20 of in game currency. The problem is that Bethesda is getting rid of the ability to earn Atoms through challenges in the way you can now. So get em while they are hot.

If you want a good series of questlines with good writing and good gameplay in the fallout universe, go play a modded Fallout NV or something. This will scratch the itch for something new but you will be quickly bored and you will most likely regret wasting your time in this game.

__________________________________________________________________________

Okay, So they fixed the server side issues. I've played another 30 hours of the game and didn't DC ones. NOT ONCE! That in itself has changed my thumbs down to a neutral.

Lets talk about quests. I enjoy the dynamic questing. Looks like they got some good writers in and made some new interesting stuff. it's not all fetch quests. The events are fun, my favorite in the hunts for hoards.

Player base is okay. I load in and find enough players to make a team with if i want but I don't run into them often enough to take me out of the moment if i solo play. There are a lot of high level players still busting around and making a nuisance of themselves but they also are helpful sometimes.

I haven't fallen through the environment once in the last 30 hours. that ticks it up towards a thumbs up.

Now. NPCs, they added them a long time ago now but I'll be blunt. about 40% are just filler with no depth. But it does make the game less... lonely? I guess is the best way to put it.

You can still earn atoms. They have weekly daily and other tasks you can earn points to unlock on their "Scoreboard" season to season. In the 30 hours I have played recently on a fresh character, I earned 560 atoms. Which dollar count is almost $6. Not bad. I can buy some things but not a lot with that, but I have plenty of other things i can do to EARN those atoms if I work at it instead of playing the game normally.

They also added some cool things to the perks. you can get legendary perks and new perk cards as well as perk load-outs to quickly switch between builds at your camp. You have to wait till lvl 25 to use the load-out system but it's nifty. Positive change for sure.

Also, the updated the weight your stash can hold. One tip have for management is to get rid of your steel, wood and lead and a few other high weight junk. Build them into Bulk items using a tinker bench and sell them to a vendor. You an make a couple hundred caps in a short time and you can keep your junk weight down. Also, Ammo. Dont keep ammo you arent actively using. Other high level player camps have ammo converters if you don't find the plan early on to bank ammo points. You exchange ammo for points and then cash in those points for the ammo you want. You can only store so much but other than that it's just a weight dump.

Over all I am impressed with the changes and am changing my Recommendation to a positive. It's still not the game everyone wanted but it's something worth playing IMO.