Fallout 76, 6 Months Later
Fallout 76, the surprise MMO adaptation of the popular Fallout series, was officially released 6 months ago, on November 14th. In the months following up to the release, I was full-steam ahead on the hype train. I had convinced my friends to preorder this game so we could all play the B.E.T.A (Break it Early Test Application) and enjoy the Fallout experience as a group. As we tried to wonder about the B.E.T.A, I found myself holding onto the hope that it would get better. I constantly told my party that the beginning is always boring for these types of games and that it would get much more fun once we got the basics down. Unfortunately, this promised fun never arrived. My group and I jumped ship a few short weeks after the official launch of Fallout 76, but I always felt like it got a bad rap. Other live service games, such as Destiny and even The Division, were redeemed in the eyes of gamers by recovering from a botched launch. 76 had a similar start at these games, so I set out to see if a redemption story could be found in the ashes of Fallout 76. The following is what I discovered.
Bethesda delivered on what they promised: a Wasteland.
Throughout my return to Appalachia, I was reminded of one thing regarding Fallout 76. The core of the game is broken, which means that no amount of patches, updates, or DLC can fix this game. In other cases such as Destiny, the game was built on a solid foundation but was failing because of connectivity issues and a dull story. These issues were addressed and fixed through different patches and DLC story packs. Fallout 76 lacks a solid foundation. The most common complaint about this game is how empty the world feels. In a way, Bethesda delivered on what they promised: a Wasteland. But players don’t love Fallout for the Wasteland. The Fallout series is loved because of the characters and stories that make up the Wasteland. The quirky towns and cities that could only be found in a post-nuclear America is what makes these games. Fallout 76 delivers a feeling of being late to what looks like a great party. Every outpost that is inhabited by Super Mutants or Scorched is filled with remnants of the people who used to live there. While it is fun to find Holotapes and notes that piece together the story of what happened in that one town, it leaves the player longing visit the town while the events were happening. For instance, one of the main story missions is a series of fetch-quests that require the player to visit multiple abandoned gang hideouts. During this mission, you discover a lot about these gangs that constantly warred for land and survival in the Wasteland. These gangs are unique and mysterious, and although you discover their secrets from hidden notes and holotapes, you can never truly interact with them. These gangs are not “new,” since they have made appearanecs in previous Fallout games, but they are an incredibly interesting part of the Fallout world. The lack of any interaction with these groups and any of the other groups synonymous with Fallout is a cruel punishment for longtime fans of the series.
The core of the issue is Bethesda’s commitment to not include NPCs in Fallout 76. The idea was that the presence of other players takes away the need for NPCs, but this idea just does not land. The majority of players are not interested in teaming up or even communicating with other random players, they are more interested in playing with close friends or finding other players to kill for fun. Mix this with the disproportioned size of the map and the limited number of players allowed in a server and you get a bad concoction of a video game that doesn’t know what it is. Flashback to the announcement of 76. One of the biggest questions coming from fans was if there would be an option to play solo. Bethesda ensured the community that solo play would be a completely viable option. This is one of the many occurrences of Bethesda spreading itself too far. The idea of having a shared world with other players and promising an entertaining, classic Fallout experience is incredibly ambitious. Ambitious does not always mean good. Fallout is a game that thrives on giving the player freedom to choose how to play the game, whether it be as a clever, charismatic, good guy or a brutish numbskull who kills everything in sight. But this freedom has to be presented with a certain amount of rules. For the games before 76, these rules were that the game was played by a single player. These are the rules that 76 lack. This lack of focus throws every aspect of the game off, from quest structures to combat and loot drops. This leads to the next issue: the confusion of quests.
Quests in Fallout 76 resemble a watered down version of quests from past Fallout games. My guess as to why the developers took this course was to try and satisfy the promise of the option solo or group play. The idea is simple, make quests that can be enjoyable for a player who is running it solo or for a group. Strangely enough, I always felt as if the quests were meant to be played solo. For the majority of the quests, I developed a personal connection with the purpose of the quest. What contributed to this feeling was how quest info was given to me, the player. Quests were often given by finding a holotape on the ground or being contacted by something in the world that would notify me of something to do. In these cases, it felt like I was being confided in with this information. The drive to complete these missions became a personal sense of duty. This left me feeling awkward about being in a group. Did my teammates feel this same sense of duty? Generally, they did not. The appeal to emotion through the story lines delivers a tricky task of attempting to make a group become motivated by similar emotions. An example of quests being done well in an MMO is Star Wars: The Old Republic. In SWTOR, players that are in groups have the option to interact with an NPCs and questgivers as a group. This works beautifully as all players in the group are receiving the information at the same time. This is the feeling that 76 needs to focus on. The main issue with playing as a group is when one player is trying to listen or read about a quest while other team members are berating for being too slow. I found myself having the most fun while playing solo.
So after 6 months, has Bethesda fixed anything? Well, they fixed the obvious issues, such as connectivity issues (for the most part) and prevalent bugs. They went a step ahead and implemented fixes to purposeful aspects of the game that players were having issues with. For instance, they lowered the weight of some integral items, such as ammo, to help the problem of constantly being over-encumbered and discouraged from exploring. They recently announced a schedule of major updates that will add story lines and new equipment. Based on this and from numerous interviews, it seems Bethesda plans to stick with Fallout 76 for the considerable future. The new story updates look fun, but the team needs to focus on inspiring the player to get to the endgame. The pacing for character leveling feels off, which does not incentivize the player to level up and proceed through the game. My character is level 23 and the last time I noticed an exciting level “bump” was at level 10. Arguably the most interesting gear, the power armor, generally has a level 40+ requirement. The player has the option to wear the power armor chassis without any actual power armor on it, but the huge decrease in speed outways the few pros of equipping it (as well as it just not looking cool). Because of this, reaching the endgame sounds like a chore. The sentiment “it will get more fun” echoes faintly in the back of my head while exploring the Wasteland, but it has lost its power to keep me playing.
I had high hopes for returning to the Wasteland of Appalachia. I tried to play every way I could, looking for a way to make Fallout 76 fun. Sadly, I could not find the fun I was looking for. I do not plan on returning to 76, but you never know what the future holds. Overall, The experiences I had in Fallout 76 left me yearning to play a traditional Fallout game. Bethesda, you can keep 76, just give me Fallout 5.
