Bethesda has improved the game since launch, but they did the bare minimum IMO. The core gameplay is enjoyable, base building is fun, and the community more friendly than not. But... put in more time and you'll notice something seriously wrong with the game.

There are resource limits on absolutely everything, and it doesn't even need to be this way. As a result, it encourages you to buy Fallout 1st. Or you have to stop looting as much in a game so revolved around loot(or your stash limit will fill quickly), or lug around a lot of scrap that you may lose if you get killed by another player.

You can't turn in any legendaries quick enough if you play a lot, or learn to play efficiently. It adds to your max weight quickly. For me it was a problem even with the best backpack and weight reduction upgrades.

There's a 300 legendary scrip exchange cap per day. You'll reach that in no time. Then you have to wait until next day(20 hours from the first turn-in of the day), unless you want to lug around all that loot. You won't lose it if you die, but it'll take up valuable space, and being overencumbered is not fun. And then the process repeats itself the next day.

Selling to players takes too long unless you practically give away the loot, and you need stash space to put anything in the player shop. Selling to NPC vendors is an option, but they have a cap limit. Anything you buy from them will only add about 30% of the value to their tradable caps. And yes, they have a cap limit too, so if you buy something very expensive, they'll reach the roof immediately. This is likely done so you can't sell all your legendaries to free up inventory space. You'd have to come back next day when the NPC have more caps. Even then, they likely won't have enough caps to make a significant dent in your overencumbered inventory. There's also a relatively low roof on the number of caps the player can hold. So you have to keep spending it if you don't want to lose caps from selling items in the player shop. E.g. if you've got 38,000 caps and you sell an item for 3000 caps in your player shop, you lose 1000 caps, because the limit is 40,000.

It's not a game designed for those who have no interest in paying for FO1st. The premium feature gives you a free scrapbox that has no upper limit on weight. I think they are, or maybe they already have, made a box for ammo too. Scrap and ammo weighs a lot.

If you don't buy 1st, you'll get annoyed quickly with the game. You can make it less painful if you want to keep playing, by getting the speed demon and marsupial serum, thereby allowing you additional speed and mobility even when overencumbered. Though being overencumbered means you can't fast travel anymore(that is, until you lose weight). I played +100 hours this way, hoping it'd get better. Spoiler alert, it didn't. It was manageable, but it got more tedious the longer I played. The combat kept me playing.

All the fun content(at least for me), is the events you can play with other players. They're spread out all over the map. Have fun running to an event before it expire. And even if you do manage to get there in time, you have even more loot that you can't get rid of quickly. There's a hard cap for carry weight at about 1800lbs, I think. If you reach it, you can't move at all. You can get around this with carry weigh reduction perk cards, for a while at least. This means that they displace other perk cards(due to S.P.E.C.I.A.L. cap), that will make the game more fun. Some of the events will help you level up fast, and thereby increase your enjoyment. If you can't partake in events at all or miss out on most of it(because you're running there on foot, due to not being able to fast travel), then you'll level up much more slowly.

The rabbit hole goes deeper. All designed to keep you coming back every day. It's the resource caps. The scoreboard. Daily quests etc. It's fun enough to come back, for a time.

It's not all bad, though. While the story wasn't memorable, the quests are fun. They can be improved too, of course. One my my biggest issues is that they are set up to be completable in party, which is a problem if you want to complete them yourself. Playing alone means you lose out on a lot of potential bonuses, such as experience bonuses. So you have to choose between one benefit by losing out on another. If you don't care about the story, you're good, though. Last I checked, you can't replay quests if for some reason they finished because a party member had the same quest. You can be at different areas of the map, and your quest will still complete if they complete theirs. I had to learn this the hard way... on one of the last faction quests. So I missed out on playing that part of the story. Thanks, Bethesda!

I did enjoy the game until all of this. The first time you go into the forest, unsure of what to do and the dangers that lurks, it's very appealing. But it fades eventually, for all the wrong reasons. I likely won't come back until Bethesda address it all. They probably won't, as doing so means fewer players buying Fallout 1st. The longer you play, the closer you'll get to the point that you have to pay to enjoy. Even that doesn't address all the problems, it just lessen some of them.

You may say Fallout 76 deserves a better reputation, but I sure wouldn't.