Everything Wrong With Fallout 76

No matter how you slice it, Fallout 1st was the last thing Fallout 76 needed. The new subscription service guarantees players a steady stream of premium currency, an infinite stash for scraps, and private servers, among other perks. This all costs $12.99 a month, or you can save yourself some money by paying an annual fee of $99.99. 

This move, even to the most diehard Fallout 76 supporter, comes off as callous. Asking players to fork over an extra $13 a month for the sake of one game — after it's been out for a year — is insane. Consider: Xbox One and PlayStation 4 players already need to pay $60 a year just to play Fallout 76 (or any multiplayer game). Had the game been built from the ground up around a subscription, like Final Fantasy 14, this move wouldn't be as egregious. But overall, Fallout 1st is a terrible bargain. Players are better off dedicating that money to a properly supported MMO. Even better, put it toward a monthly subscription to Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Now. Both are cheaper, and both offer far more gameplay value.

In what might have been the first (and only) moment of positive public perception for Fallout 76, Bethesda announced the Wastelanders update at E3 2019. The update would add a lot of free content to the live-service game, chief among them being actual human NPCs. Some will be companions, while others will give you quests. The update would add an overarching story about the settlers and the raiders, two warring factions in Appalachia. Your choices would have consequences and shape the world around you. In other words, Wastelanders would make Fallout 76 more of a Fallout game.

Needless to say, fans were excited for the update. Unfortunately, in mid-October, Bethesda delayed the update to Q1 2020. To console the heartbroken fans, the company turned around and announced Fallout 1st. Talk about tone deaf.

To be fair, delays are simply part of the industry. Sure, they're disappointing, but more often than not, the developers have a good reason. However, announcing a money-grubbing subscription scheme hot off the heels of a delay showcases how little Bethesda cares about its Fallout 76 fans.

It's hard to look past the scummy, business-oriented nature that inspired Fallout 1st. Yet, even discarding all that, the service isn't exactly proving itself worthy of your time or money. One of the first things the service promises is to ensure private servers for you and up to seven other friends. In other words, if you and a small squad wanted to wander Appalachia without running into other players, you could do that. Alternatively, if you wanted to turn Fallout 76 into a single-player game, you could do that too.

That sounds fine and dandy; too bad it doesn't work. When the service launched, players found that anyone on their friends list could join their private server, invited or not. Doesn't seem so private anymore, does it? The only way to ensure a server to yourself is to play it with seven other friends.

Furthermore, people have found that these "new" worlds in private servers aren't quite new. Dead NPCs litter some of the landscapes, while settlements have already been looted. In other words, it seems like you're playing in someone else's used world rather than your own.

Scrap plays a fairly important role in Fallout 76. You can turn any junk into scrap, and then that scrap can be used at crafting stations or when building stuff for your CAMP. To put it simply, you can never have too much scrap. The Fallout 1st subscription takes that to the next level by making the scrap box hold infinite scrap.

Unfortunately, much like many other parts of Fallout 1st, this infinite scrap box seems broken. Players have reported that the box doesn't actually keep any scrap. Once some was put into the box, players couldn't seem to find any of it. Logging off and back on didn't fix it. Instead, hard-working players just lost hundreds if not thousands of scrap units, which represented hours and hours of gameplay.

They lost all of it because they paid Bethesda even more money at the promise of "better" features. Fallout 1st didn't have much going for it, but this news didn't do the developers any favors.

Time and again, Bethesda has broken its seal of trust with consumers. When it initially implemented the Atomic Shop in Fallout 76, we were assured players could only buy cosmetics from it. People feared that one day, that statement wouldn't be true. Yet, Bethesda Senor Vice President Pete Hines doubled down on the message via Twitter. He responded to fans and said, "All the dlc/new content will be free."

Unfortunately, that only remained true for about eight months. In April 2019, Bethesda added repair kits to the Atomic Shop, which repaired gear without using any scrap. Three months later, scrap kits joined the shop's inventory. These items automatically scrapped your junk and put it in your stash, saving you time.

Then in September 2019, Bethesda added a refrigerator and a scrap collecting robot to the Atomic Shop. These CAMP upgrades would preserve your food and generate free scrap for you, but the only way to get them is by spending Atoms. Over the span of a year, the lies started to unravel. These items clearly went beyond just cosmetics, yet Bethesda charged money for them.

When Fallout 76 was announced, Bethesda also revealed a $200 special edition that promised a steelbook, a map, a wearable power armor helmet, and a canvas bag, among a few other goodies. When people got ahold of these special editions, they found that the bags were made of nylon instead of canvas. Bethesda cited unavailable materials as the reason they couldn't deliver, and as reparations, it offered all disappointed customers 500 Atoms. That's a measly $5, in case you didn't know.

Of course, people wanted Bethesda to deliver on its promise, so the company moved toward making those canvas bags. Finally, in June 2019, consumers got their bags in the mail. It took eight months for Bethesda to secure enough valuable canvas to produce these bags and send them out. From the start, the company had been lying to prospective customers, and it took its sweet time to make up for those mistakes.

One thing Fallout 76 did to the franchise was trivialize the nuke. Previously, nukes were terrifying things, but now, they're just part of the endgame. Players would work together to launch these weapons of mass destruction. After the mushroom cloud dissipates, the area becomes a blast zone, containing radiation and higher quality loot. 

When detonated over a Fissure Site, the blast zone spawns high-level enemies, including a level 95 Scorchedbeast Queen. Killing it results in some rare drops, which really is the bread and butter of any endgame. To be more efficient though, some players tried launching three nukes at the same time. After all, if they could handle the heat, why not be thrice as productive?

Unfortunately, Bethesda's servers couldn't handle three simultaneous nuclear blasts. This crashed the server, booting those players back to the main menu. In other words, a mechanic that Bethesda encourages players to use ended up destroying its own servers. You'd think the company would have enough resources to ensure this wouldn't be an issue.

At the end of the day, Fallout 76 has a myriad problems, many of which reflect some of the industry's most awful practices. The worst thing about it all, though, is that Fallout 76 is so blatantly not a Fallout game. When you look back on 3 and 4, both had vibrant worlds full of life and interesting places. NPCs had stories to tell, and your choices affected the narrative (to some extent).

Ironically, despite introducing real-life players to the world, Fallout 76 features a dearth of character. It's lifeless and devoid of any charm. The Wastelanders update generated the most positive buzz about the game in its first year, and even that took a backseat to Fallout 1st, a subscription service that scavenges every last cap from players' wallets. No matter how you slice it, Fallout 76 won't scratch the same itch that 3 or 4 did, because it lost sight of what makes Fallout fun in the first place.

War may never change, but Bethesda certainly does.