The last few months have not been good for Fallout 76 and Bethesda. The once celebrated flagship of the RPG genre has certainly taken a hit. Fallout 4 may have been a huge success, but the launch of Fallout 76, the latest game in the series, has been anything but smooth. The marketing run for the open-world survival title was confusing for longtime fans, as a franchise that thrives on story isn’t exactly something you’d expect for a multiplayer survival experience. All the hardcore fans I know would have loved to play Minecraft in the Wasteland, but wait. A beta period plagued by bugs and other issues didn’t bode well either.
But once the game hit the market, things got worse as time went on. A whole series of bugs plagued the game and, in some cases, the purchasing process. One infamous slip-up was on the part of Bethesda, who substituted a promised canvas bag for a much cheaper nylon bag on the game’s $200 Power Armor Edition. This triggered a flood of responses that Bethesda failed to adequately alleviate, and Bethesda support even revealed personal information of users who tried to fix the problem. But that’s just the beginning.
There are way too many problems to talk about Fallout 76, as we’ve discussed many times before. If you want a quick recap, YouTuber Matt McMuscles has put together a pretty solid video that sums up the whole mess.
But it looks like Bethesda is actually making a little amends now, or at least planning to.
Gameplay is getting a pretty major overhaul with the introduction of equipment and perks. Players will be able to swap out Perks as full equipment in the future, allowing for switching between different character archetypes. Public events will be adjusted over the next year and some bugs will be fixed as well.
As for user security and trust, Bethsda has planned some new options. Two-factor authentication, an integral part of the modern Internet security landscape, will finally be introduced to the Appalachian wasteland next year. Work is also being done on clarity of information in future updates, and a big part of that is that the developer plans to introduce a full test server where players can try out new content early to put it through its paces.
Besides these few big changes, the company has a lot more planned for the future. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming for Fallout 76 in 2020:
- PTS – A public test server (PTS) is currently in the works, and we hope to have it up and running in 2020. Once we have resolved all (or most) issues, we will provide more details about our PTS and how you can participate.
- Perk Loadouts – Perk Loadouts are also currently scheduled for early 2020. Like the PTS, this system is still in development, and while we look forward to making it available to you, there is still a long way to go before we can announce more details. Look for a future Inside the Vault as we get closer to release.
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – Account security is very important to us, and we know it’s important to you too. The wonderful Bethesda.net team has been working hard to implement MFA for Bethesda.net. They are very close and plan to make this happen by the end of the year.
- Legendary Players – Originally we thought and planned that the legendary system would come this year, but plans had to be adjusted while we worked on other things. We are still very much looking forward to the release of this system and currently have it scheduled for Q1 2020.
- Fixing social menu issues – We are aware of an issue that can prevent players on PC from sending and accepting friend invites, and we are also investigating several other social menu issues across all platforms. We’re working to fix the friends issue on PC as soon as possible, but this is just one part of a group of social issues we plan to address in several future updates.
- Additional improvements for public events – We’ve heard your feedback that the cooldown between public events is too long, and we plan to reduce it by at least half with a fix included in Patch 14. We are also planning a second phase of improvements for public events that will bring additional cooldowns, achievement-based loot, and the elimination of the need to tag legendary event enemies to get their loot. The second phase of public event rollout is currently scheduled for early next year, and we’ll keep you posted as we get closer to these updates.
So it remains to be seen if these promises can be kept and if they work as intended. Only time will tell if Fallout 76 manages to recover from its bumpy start.