October 2022 marks Fallout’s 25th anniversary, and Game Pass gave me a free month of Fallout 1st, so I decided to reinstall the game and see how it’s progressed since I last played (nearly two years ago), especially with the new Pitt area to explore.
I think I like the game even less now than I did before, even with the various improvements that have been made. Even with a month of Fallout 1st membership, Fallout 76 couldn’t hold my attention for a week.
Quality of Life
There have been a few great quality of life improvements since I last played. Some of these have been around a while, but it’s been long enough since I played that this is my first time interacting with the new features.
There’s the punch card machine that lets you have multiple builds and easily switch between them. You can build one at your camp and there are several in the world (at the train stations and major hubs). I saved my stealthy rifleman build and added a power armor build. Unfortunately, that’s all you get for free; each additional slot (up to 13) costs 500 atom points – Fallout 76’s premium currency.
Legendary cores were added as a resource used to re-roll legendary weapons (or make non-legendary weapons legendary), which is a great way to work toward making your perfect gun. I don’t like that re-rolls change all legendary affixes on a weapon (instead of just targeting particular ones), but at least it’s something.
Storage was increased to 1200 back when I was still playing, but hasn’t increased since. The magic scrapbox is still a Fallout 1st exclusive.
The Pitt
The Pitt is a new instanced zone that you travel to for missions. It’s basically just a bigger, more quest-oriented Daily Ops map. Unlike Daily Ops, stealth builds are actually usable in The Pitt, which is nice. I’ve run it a few times, and it’s not bad, but the last part (with a heavy radstorm) is just annoying. The first time I played, I was unprepared and just kept dying over and over. I eventually gave up and just ran as far as I could before my next death.
There’s unfortunately not much more to say about it. It’s just a big quest map.
Unchanged
Most of the game seems like it’s basically the same, for better or worse.
Seasons are unchanged. Daily and Weekly objectives are still annoying chores, and leveling up on the scoreboard is still annoyingly slow. This hasn’t changed at all and it’s still terrible.
Gameplay still favors power armor in the late game, which is disappointing because there’s so much more you can do besides power armor. I guess it makes sense for a “live service” game, though, since you have to keep grinding for power cores to continue using your armor.
The seasonal world events are still around, and while they’re not bad, they’re just a chaotic horde mode (kill waves of enemies until you win). The alien invasion for the anniversary was fun.
The interface is still extremely clunky and difficult, thanks to having everything revolve around the Pip-Boy. I get that it’s a common Fallout thing, but this game is more complex, so it starts to get in the way. I guess it’s better for controller players than a virtual cursor, though.
And it’s still lacking that Fallout feel that made the older games so enjoyable.
Boring
Like I said above, Fallout 76 couldn’t even keep my attention for a week this time around. I was off playing other things I enjoy more. I used to enjoy the base building, but coming back to it, I found it very unintuitive and restrictive. I enjoy the weapon crafting, but I wasn’t really interested in pushing to re-roll “perfect” weapons with legendary cores. I had already finished most of the main storyline quests, so I was left with the boring repeatable “daily” quests.
Unless something big changes, I don’t think I’ll be coming back to Fallout 76. It’s a shame because they could do so much with it, but the foundation just isn’t there; they’d need to completely rethink the game to fix its numerous problems. And with so many better options available, it’s hard to recommend.