All my most anticipated games of the year are being graced with new Gameplay demos and playthroughs for me to shift through, and here I am talking about this one game that left me down to the highest degree. It's like I can't let go of my Ex because I'm forever trapped wondering what could have been rather than looking to the future. But there's no point beating around the bush; Fallout 76 is a game that I might actually be playing again in the next few months so I might as well start paying attention. (Oh god, I think I got a little vomit in my mouth just by typing that. How is that even possible?) I had hoped that my next blog on this game wouldn't be until the launch of Wastelanders, or rather two months after that launch so that Bethesda can iron out the inevitable game breaking, inventory deleting bugs. But the team hath summoned me once more by saying something so inherently stupid that I had to weigh in.
So recently Bethesda have been ramping up their Fallout 76 content in anticipation for what is essentially the 1.0 launch of the game; Wastelanders. (Get it? Because the original game was so broken that it couldn't possible be a final release? I'll be here all week.) With Wastelanders comes a renewed Appalachia as NPCs make their way back into the game. (And I can confirm that was 100% not their plan from the beginning as the 'isolation' of the game is actually one of the selling points on the back of the game box.) Now go to anyone who is an active Fallout 76 player or who has dedicated significant time to it in the past, (sigh, yes I am one of those people.) and ask them their thoughts on Wastelanders and you'll likely get some mixed to positive feedback. People are excited for this, Fallout 76 should never have launched without NPCs to start with, they are what made Fallout special as a franchise.
But ramping up marketing means getting back into communicating with the public, (Something that the Bethesda bigwigs have been smartly avoiding ever since the Fallout 1st debacle.) and unfortunately it seems that the team still haven't really mastered that yet. Afterall, I can only assume that's the reason why Pete Hines, the most public face of Bethesda, relayed how the team settled on creating Wastelanders after being "surprised" by the playerbase's reticence to partake in the PVP aspect of the game. Now to be fair to them, Bethesda did put in considerable thought and consideration towards PVP when creating this game. In fact, judging from the state of everything else it was the only aspect of Fallout 76 to receive any attention before release. So if we adopt the mindset of an undeveloped fetus that is entirely incapable of deductive reasoning or even higher thought, we might also be at a loss to figuring out why folk didn't take to the PVP streets of West Virgina. But let's analyse this situation with a little thing I like to call; a minuscule degree of brain power.
At it's heart Fallout 76 is a game that is built around the collection and hoarding of items in order to stave off your ever approaching death at the hands of everything from the weather, to other people, or your own biological functions. This means that players have to juggle keeping themselves fed, slept, hydrated, armed, and protected at all time. A lot of maintaining that comes from having a steady store of scrap on hand to build defences and keep guns running, junk which is at risk whenever you die as your player will drop it. Now that is what is called a risk/reward system and it is the basic building block to every video game under the sun. You need resources to progress with the game, or in this case to survive, but you have to put yourself in danger to get those resources. This is the first roadblock to people wanting to take part in PVP as it is arguably the most risky move that you can take, but I feel this is completely fine for any game as without a consequence to death there is no incentive to defy it.
Now all of that is how Fallout 76 is supposed to function, how it was built to, but in practice things don't always play out like that. Remember how I said that players need scrap in order to survive? What I didn't mention was the fact that scrap is everywhere and can be gathered with minimal effort on your part. That fact alone really invalidates the risk of death and makes it so that the only real thing that makes players want to avoid the big KO is the inconvenience of having to trek all the way back. (Or the server choosing to crash and kicking you, thus deleting all of you dropped junk.) But then, what's the problem with PVP? If there's no real incentive for losing than why aren't people giving it a go? Well the answer is actually hidden in what I told you, for you see: There's no incentive to winning at PVP either, so why even bother with it in the first place?
Most games with PVP functionality have some sort of progression system tied to them in order incentivise it or/and make it fun. If we look at games that are closer to Fallout 76 like 'The Elder Scrolls Online'; there is an entire section of the map entirely dedicated to PVP called Cyrodiil in which skilled players can wage warfare for the chance of winning campaign rewards. There's also a duel mechanic that offers titles and a newer 'battlegrounds' PVP reward that awards something I'm sure. (I never played it, didn't really have the friends to.) Fallout 76 lacks that wholeheartedly as the only possible reward for winning a fight against another player is the reward of their scrap. (Or a Caps reward. But Caps aren't all that important anyway.)
But then there's another factor to consider, and that is the shameless lack of balancing on the behalf of Bethesda that makes PVP just unbearable. Fallout 76's base game was built upon the bones of Fallout 4, which makes sense at first until you consider the fact that Fallout 4 is an entirely single player game, so how would that baseline title be morphed into a well balanced multiplayer environment? Answer: It won't be. Over a year into Fallout 4's life cycle right now and all the 'Metas' of PVP revolve around one thing; breaking your stats by exploiting ill-thought out systems and buffs. Most famous of which are the 'TSE' weapons which, due to literally no thought going into it whatsoever, allow a weapon to be buffed from two different stat increases, and the 'Bloodied build', which is so ridiculous I can't even be bothered to go into it right now. These builds allow for player's in PVP to essentially oneshot anyone they come across who isn't also exploiting systems, making PVP absolutely no fun at all for 90% of the fan base. The worst part is, these are the people who Bethesda have been tailoring the game towards, building content that will challenge their broken playstyles rather than the standard ones that everyone else runs. How is anyone without stupid stats supposed to take on the 'Scorchbeast Queen', or the 'Imposter Sheepsquatch'?
But here we are, more than a year past launch and Pete Hines is telling us 'We had no idea that no one would play our PVP, what a shock!'. Let me explain why, Pete: It's because the PVP sucks! Unfortunately, the consequence of this is that the base Fallout 76 experience is now being retroactively converted in a PVE game whilst all the PVP content is becoming side gigs for the team to release, and then promptly forget about the moment they stop being popular. (When was the last time that 'Survival Mode' got a substantial patch?) If they were really dedicated to making this game whole they would dedicate a team to the PVP aspects of Fallout 76 and find a way to reintroduce them back into the game, and heck, maybe that's the plan after Wastelanders; who knows? Now I realise that I've been ragging on this game a lot just now, and in the past, but let me be clear: I'm happy that significant change is just around the corner and I hope that things get better for Fallout. It's a franchise that I truly love and think would be capable of great things with the right ideas being thrown in and the right people working behind it. I just hope Bethesda can prove that they are the right people, because I'm not the only who's been questioning that of late. (Come on guys, prove us wrong!)
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