Fallout 76 – Addendum

After my Fallout 76 Review, I had some additional thoughts about the game regarding some of my frustrations. There was also a “Bombs Drop Event” this past week – celebrating the day everything went to hell in the Fallout universe – which provided one-week access to Fallout 1st perks, so I now have some firsthand opinions about those perks.

Build Frustrations

I touched on this in my review, but I wanted to elaborate on some of the frustrations I have about build balance. I understand a game with as much variation as Fallout is difficult to balance for multiplayer (which is another reason it probably shouldn’t exist as a multiplayer game), but the amount of imbalance continuously annoys me. I’ve built my Fallout 76 character as a stealth sniper – a style I’ve always enjoyed because it deals high damage without the use of heavy weapons. When I’m free exploring, this build works great, as I can typically handle anything I find in my travels without much difficulty. Unfortunately, this build is at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to most high-level content. Most of the Fallout 76 endgame is structured around public events and the new “Daily Ops” introduced in the One Wasteland for All patch. These events all work in a way that makes the rifleman build weaker than the alternatives.

In “Daily Ops”, enemies have two mutations that make them more difficult than usual. One of these mutations is permanent and provides them with heightened perception that makes stealth useless. These events also require you to defend points in the area, which means all the enemies know where you are and you can’t hide from them. You can manage through with a rifle, but stealth just won’t work, so all the perks I have to boost my stealth and my sneak attack damage are worthless. I also don’t have any perks in the same stats to replace them, so I just have several wasted points when I’m playing these events.

In most other endgame events, you’re either fighting a boss or defending against waves of enemies. The rifleman build works for a few of these where the enemies are relatively few and weak (the lower-level events), but in most cases high-powered single-shot rifles put you at a disadvantage; mostly just because of the way experience works in the game. Players will gain experience for any kill on an enemy they’ve damaged, regardless of who gets the kill. As a result, players who carry heavy, rapid-fire weapons like gatling lasers or miniguns tend to gain experience the fastest, as they can simply spray an area and hit nearly everything. In most high-level content, I find myself fighting alongside players in power armor toting gatling lasers, gatling plasma, or miniguns (usually explosive miniguns). The only way I’ve found to keep up is by using a tesla rifle, which shoots lightning that will arc to multiple targets (or off the environment), allowing me to hit multiple targets at once; though it will also arc to players, so if there are several hulking power armors between me and an enemy, I’m still not likely to get a hit. Even the players who aren’t carrying heavy weapons are typically using automatic rifles, which works the same way.

Rifles also end up being extremely weak against bosses. Because of their low rate-of-fire, rifles perform very poorly when fighting a boss with high resistances. Even with all my bonuses and using my highest-powered rifles, I can’t cause much damage to high-level bosses, while players with heavy and automatic weapons will regularly chew through bosses much faster. Semi-automatic rifles have a damage boost over automatic weapons, but it’s not enough to make up for the difference in fire rate. With the disadvantages rifles have in most of the multiplayer content, it seems they should be much stronger to compensate (likely to the point that a rifle-focused build should one-shot most enemies), or automatic weapons weakened to bring them in line. (I doubt either will ever happen.)

The only “disadvantage” to automatic rifles and heavy weapons is the amount of ammunition you need to carry (and its weight). There are perks to reduce the weight of the ammunition (to the point where it’s practically weightless), so that’s already balanced out. You need the crafting materials to craft ammunition as well; but lead, steel, and gunpowder are easy to find and there are perks to increase the amount of ammunition you craft. Maybe you could point to the amount of scrap you need to keep on hand as a potential disadvantage, but it turns out there’s a way around that, too; it just costs real-money dollars.

Fallout 1st

After a one-week trial of Fallout 1st, I can say this much with certainty now: it’s not worth the asking price and the scrapbox should be given to all players.

The scrapbox is a storage item you can place in your camp that stores an unlimited amount of scrap. When I started the trial week, I immediately crafted it and moved all my scrap over. Half of my 800-pound stash was scrap material. Over the week, I grabbed everything that wasn’t nailed down so I could scrap it and put it in this magical box of scrap-holding; just so I would have a stockpile once I could no longer add to it. (When your Fallout 1st subscription lapses, you can still remove items from the scrapbox; you just can’t add to it.) And while I certainly won’t hoard as much junk now that I can’t put it all in this container, I did notice a change for the week I had it: I was less stressed. Constantly having to worry about your storage space is annoying. You can’t just sell all the scrap, since vendors will only buy so much per day. I can sell to other players, but until someone buys it, the scrap continues to take up space. So ultimately, I’m left carrying a significant amount of my junk on my person, with the Pack Rat perk reducing the weights to make it manageable. This one item actually made the game more fun, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to lock items that make the game fun or less stressful behind a subscription fee.

The Fallout 1st trial also game with use of the survival tent, which is a freely-movable fast travel point with some storage and crafting items. This was convenient to use, but this is one of those items I’m OK having behind the subscription. I’d love if everyone had access to it, but it’s not as game-changing as the scrapbox. While the fast travel tax is annoying, it’s not as stressful as the inventory management needed to handle all that scrap.

Finally, the trial gave players a few free items – a wallpaper and a flooring. Woo. Sure, give these to subscribers for free; doesn’t bother me at all.

The trial didn’t provide the stipend subscribers get (understandable; it’s approximately $16.50 worth of premium currency), but I think the stipend is just thrown in there to make it seem “worth” the asking price. Personally, I don’t think giving away $13 (or $8.25/month at the $99/year) of my real-world dollars is worth it for $17 of Fallout fun-bucks. Just give me a $5/month or $50/year option just to get a few free items and the tent. That seems worth it and much more fair to players.

Seasons

The past week also provided players with double experience and double score for the season. I was able to progress very rapidly (both because of the bonuses and because of the scrapbox; less time managing my inventory means more time actually playing), and managed to get to rank 80. I still think I’m going to have to play daily to just barely finish the season, but at least it feels more attainable. I think this serves as a sign that the amount you have to put into the season needs to be reduced, as the current model adds to the stress. I feel like I should be able to finish the season in about a month if I play daily. If Bethesda wants to keep players engaged for a longer time, they need to provide content, not yet another thing to grind through.

Fallout can be better

I think Bethesda could learn a lot from Bungie and Destiny here. I can complete a Destiny season in about a month of regular play. The “subscription” is a $60-70 expansion pass each year, and that pass comes with a lot of new content – strikes, patrol zones, Crucible and Gambit maps, gameplay modes, events. While paying for the expansions and seasons will give you several items up front, everything is attainable by free-to-play players (aside from some cosmetics). Even the cosmetics in the Eververse store can be had with enough gameplay – you can finish quests for Bright Dust and buy items from Eververse in the weekly rotations. Sure, Destiny is a grind, but I never feel particularly disadvantaged.

The only experiences in Destiny that I don’t get to experience are the raids and challenging quests. These events are interesting and provide some great gear, but typically require a well-coordinated team and a large time investment. While I’d love to have that gear, I’m just fine without it, and the only time it actually affects me is during PvP, which I don’t really like anyway. There’s also enough alternative options to reduce the sting of getting taken out by a weapon I’ll never be able to have. This is the one area where I feel Fallout does better, multiplayer-wise: I can play end-game events because they don’t require a well-coordinated team; just players who can fight back enemies. Daily Ops are like Destiny strikes, and the world events are like Destiny’s public events. They’re not always quite as interesting in Fallout, but they’re accessible, and that’s what I like most about them. Bethesda just needs to work on making everything in Fallout 76 that accessible.