Review: Fallout 76

Back in July, Fallout 76 came to Xbox Game Pass and I decided to give it a try. I had avoided the game since its launch because everything I heard about it sounded distinctly non-Fallout: PvP focus, no NPCs, etc. Even since I started playing, there have been updates that have improved the game, so Bethesda is definitely doing a good job making the game better. I’ve played frequently since I started, and since I’ve reached level 100, I feel like this is a good time to put my thoughts about the game down. As with all games, there are good and bad elements, but ultimately, however, I don’t think Fallout works as a multiplayer game.

The Good

Just recently, the One Wasteland for All update has been a great update and actually solved a lot of problems I had with the game before. The update causes enemies to scale to your level, so you’re free to explore the wasteland without encountering the random high-level creature. Before, there were several low-level quests that would lead a player into high-level territory, preventing progress until the player is higher level. Since the update, I’ve been able to freely explore places I was less comfortable exploring before, and I can join any event I like. I’ve seen players just freshly out of Vault 76 (in the level 1-10 range) joining endgame events and contribute just as well as the level 400+ players. Everyone is fighting the same enemies, but always at their level.

My favorite parts of the Fallout experience have always been exploring the wasteland and learning about what happened before the bombs fell. When I started, the Wastelanders expansion was already out, which introduced NPCs and new quests, so I can’t compare to how the game felt before that point, but the Appalachian wasteland feels like classic Fallout now. I learn about characters and their stories without ever meeting them; I learn about what happened both before and after the Great War; I get to learn about the real-world West Virginia in it’s fictionalized version. The classic Fallout experience is all here.

In Fallout 4, one of my favorite features was building up the various settlements, but the build limits always felt restrictive – I remember my settlement in Sanctuary had a wall around the island, a single building, and a bunch of shops on a concrete foundation. In 76, you get your own “C.A.M.P.” to place and build up wherever you like. While the amount of space you get to build within and the budget for building still feel restrictive, I’ve loved building up my wasteland home. It’s my own personal workshop, shelter, and farm. I’ve spent hours building and decorating. I get excited when I find new plans for something else I can build in my camp. The building elements from Fallout 4 have been expanded and improved in Fallout 76.

Finally, there are certain multiplayer elements of the game that I really enjoy. I enjoy seeing other players visit my camp and make use of my workstations or buy from my vending machines. I love seeing how other players have built their camps. I enjoy the world events that groups of players can join and face waves of enemies. Bethesda has made it really easy to join up with other players in many different ways. I generally play solo, and you can play the majority of the content completely alone. Most endgame content has to be played with other players, but you don’t have to team up with other players during events. I like being able to play the game alone with other players wandering around, occasionally encountering another player in the wasteland or at my camp, then continue on my way. And generally, other players are very friendly and well-meaning, which improves the overall experience of the game.

The Bad

While there’s a lot to the game that I enjoy, there are some constant annoyances that I encounter that continually detract from the game. Most of these issues are ultimately caused by the multiplayer aspect of the game, unfortunately making what could be a truly fantastic game disappointing.

I don’t enjoy PvP in the slightest. There are plenty of games that I completely avoid because they’re primarily competitive (e.g., the entire “battle royale” category). In Fallout 76, you can turn on a “pacifist” flag that will prevent you from hurting other players and other players hurting you. While I’ve never killed another player (and never intend to), I’ve been killed by other players twice. The first time was after I picked a lock in a workshop claimed by another player. Typically locks have red text when unlocking them is bad (I assume); this one wasn’t, but still put a ten cap bounty on me. Later, I was turning in a quest when I was one-shotted by a high-level player. The second time, I was preparing to defend a workshop I had claimed from a wave of enemies, when I was one-shotted by a player, losing 50 caps. Both of these experiences soured me on Fallout for a short time, so I can’t imagine how bad things were when the game first came out. The experiences will also shape how I plan to play from now on – I never intend to stay at a workshop for very long, for instance, to avoid opening myself up for PvP. (I don’t understand why you’re forced into PvP for owning a workshop anyway.)

You do a lot of building things in Fallout 76. This requires a lot of scrap that you need to keep around to build things. Unfortunately, the stash at your camp only holds 800 pounds of stuff, including guns (which can be very heavy), armor, chems (also oddly heavy), miscellaneous items, and junk – including your scrap. Apparently early players could only keep 400 pounds in their stash and I have no idea how they managed, as I’m constantly fighting my 800-pound limit. It’s difficult to actually keep the items you’d like to keep because of the stash capacity. Making matters worse, vendors and the legendary exchange machine (used to scrap legendaries) have a limit to how much you can get from them per day, meaning I’ve sometimes had to quit the game to come back the next day and get rid of unwanted gear. In general, weight management is a giant pain, even with perks and equipment to reduce weights or increase carry capacity. I’ve gotten better at managing my own inventory since I managed to complete the quest line to craft a backpack (a quest that takes far too long to complete), but I still occasionally face problems with the weight of items.

Most games like this contain a lot of grinding, but Fallout 76 takes it to a new level. Nearly everything you do in the game is another grind: gaining experience beyond level 50; earning gold bullion; earning reputation with the raiders and settlers; finding good legendary equipment and scrapping the bad for legendary scrip; gaining perk coins to level up legendary perks; seasonal score; daily quests. At a certain point, the grind just gets boring. One thing I’ve used to break up the grinding are some of the quests in the game – what I mentioned above as one of my favorite parts of Fallout. Unfortunately, 76 almost seems to discourage completing quests – the rewards for an hour-plus quest line are worse than a fifteen-minute event. It seems like spending time with the lore of the game should be rewarded better than a short event; especially considering those quests can only be completed once anyway.

There are also numerous, lingering bugs in the game – things typical to the Fallout series, but aren’t a major issue in single-player games. Controls have stopped working while at a terminal or picking a lock; equipment has spontaneously duplicated itself; I’ve been unable to use a workbench because it’s “in use” by no one. The worst issue I’ve encountered is in combat: I’ll have to “kill” an enemy multiple times, when my headshot doesn’t register properly (their health bar is reduced to zero) and they heal back to full health after a second or two. Some of these are likely things I’ve seen in past Fallout games, but they’re made worse simply by being in a multiplayer game.

The Ugly

There are some parts of the game that aren’t necessarily bad, they’re just implemented in a way that doesn’t work well.

There are a few “cap taxes” in the game that aren’t necessarily bad (they’re meant to pull caps out of the economy), but they’re annoying. I don’t have any problem with the vendor-based tax (10% of what a player pays doesn’t go to the seller), but the fast travel tax is simply annoying. It can cost more than 30 caps just to travel across the map. Bethesda recently made the two faction bases – Crater and Foundation – free to fast-travel to (and you visit them frequently as part of their quest lines and daily quests), so you can use them as a free fast-travel before paying to get to wherever you’re headed. However, making any location free for fast travel only makes it obvious how silly it is to charge caps for fast travel in the first place. If they need to take caps out of the economy, just put something worthwhile, expensive, and repeatable into the game. You can buy mutation serum recipes for around 20000 caps, and they’re worth buying; the game just needs more things like that.

In the latest patch, they’ve introduced a new event called “Daily Ops”. These are meant to be short, objective-based missions within an instanced area. Unfortunately, these events aren’t balanced very well. The enemies will have a random mutation, and some are incredibly annoying. One that was common for several days was “resilient”, where enemies can only be killed with a melee attack – not even a nuke would kill them. In addition, the enemies always have a “perceptive” mutation which allows them to see any player, even my high-stealth invisible character. Since I play a stealth build with relatively low resistances, I’m at a severe disadvantage playing the daily ops.

The seasonal system is a huge grind and requires you to do things you may not enjoy. Daily goals may include claiming workshops, playing the new “Daily Ops” event, or killing a particular type of enemy. Most of the time, these goals are pretty easy to accomplish, but the limited nature prevents much progress on the seasonal scoreboard. Destiny handles this much better, where you gain progress for earning experience, so you can simply do whatever you want and be rewarded with seasonal progress. I’ve been playing nearly every day since the latest season began (about a month now), and I’m only just getting to the halfway point. Even if I continue to play every day through the rest of the season (until November 24th), I’ll probably only barely reach the end. Games that demand my attention daily generally turn me off these days, and the least Bethesda could do is make the seasons last longer or provide ways to complete the season faster.

Finally, there’s the “Fallout 1st” subscription. I’m not opposed to a subscription for the game, but the asking price here – $13/month or $99/year – is far too high. I have no interest in private servers, and I don’t care about the premium-currency stipend (if I’m desperate to buy things, I can just buy the currency separately), but there are a few quality-of-life items locked behind the subscription. Fallout 1st players get a “scrapbox” to hold all their scrap with unlimited storage, and a “survival tent” they can place as a mini-camp to act as a free fast-travel point. If the price were much lower – maybe $5/month or $50/year – I’d consider joining for the QOL items, but at it’s current price, it’s just not worth it, and this leaves a lot of the non-paying players feeling like second-class citizens.

Summary

I’m disappointed and frustrated by Fallout 76. I can tell there’s a good game in there, but it’s buried under annoying systems and tons of grinding. It’s at least at a point where I can recommend it to fans of the Fallout series (barely) – but I definitely wouldn’t suggest it to anyone else. I want desperately to love this game, but I keep finding things that annoy me and make me want to stop playing. I’ll likely try to finish this season, but I may not play any more after that (especially considering there are a lot of games coming at the end of November that I’m going to want to put time into).