Fan Reaction to Fallout 76

Event
Event:	Fan Reaction to Fallout 76
Participants:
Date(s):	2018
Type:	Controversy
Fandom:	Fallout
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Fallout 76 has been the subject of fan discussion, much of it negative, since well before its release. The game's controversy has been related to issues through its development and launch, and fans' dissatisfaction with gameplay elements such as merchandise, glitches, and more.

Development & Release

In 2007, well before the game was even formally announced, a legal dispute between Interplay and Bethesda Softworks over the rights granted to Interplay for the creation of a Fallout MMORPG was filed. That dispute was settled in 2012, with Bethesda regaining the rights to the creation of any future Fallout MMORPGs. However, many fans wondered if we would ever see a Fallout MMORPG, which resulted in quite a bit of buzz when Fallout 76 was announced in June 2018.

Early announcements at the gaming convention Quakecon in August 2018 looked promising, but fans were wary about the game after the announcement that cross platform play wouldn't be supported due to Sony's reluctance. Then, ahead of the beta set for October 2018, it was announced that Fallout 76 wouldn't be available on the popular PC platform Steam. By that point, fans started losing faith and questioning if a Fallout MMORPG was even viable.

The game was released on 14 November 2018 for the regular price of $59.99USD, but near immediately went on sale during Black Friday for a mere $40USD before being dropped to $34.99USD on Amazon. It is now regularly on sale, something almost unheard of for a relatively new game from a major publisher, and is such a flop that German GameStops were giving away the game for free with select purchases regardless of whether customers wanted it or not. Despite being fairly universally disappointing and also a glitchy, unplayable mess, Fallout 76 still managed to make it onto Polygon's "The best PC games of 2018".

Lack of Human NPCs

NPCs play a big role in most Fallout games. Given the post-apocalyptic, single-player nature of the rest of the series, there isn't much to do in a Fallout game besides talk to NPCs. The early announcement that the game would feature no human NPCs at all caused a lot of discussion before the game's release, and thoughts about this inclusion seemed to come in two general flavors: those for it and those ready to fix the problem themselves.

Each player can be like a NPC, we can interact with each other and "Roleplay if you like", trade, give each other quests and rewards. I see no issue at all.

- Lobselvith, No NPCs to interact with??? Then it's not Fallout anymore

Fallout 4 has hundreds of NPCs to flesh out and fill the world. This will have a map 4 times that size and a dozen or so players... Can you seriously not see the issue here? Also, NPCs are consistent. You know where they are, when their shops open, what their allegiance is, etc. A hand full of players can not fill that role. This game is now just another sandbox pvp like so many others already out there. 7 Days to die, Rust, Ark, Dark & Light, just to name a few, but seriously there are dozens of them. Now it may be a potentially better sandbox pvp, but that does not make it what we have come to know as a Fallout game. It would be like calling 7 Days to Die an RPG just because the players can "choose" to roleplay if they want.

- Fortigan, No NPCs to interact with??? Then it's not Fallout anymore

There were also those who were surprised that people felt that the Fallout series was defined by NPC interaction, given that the series takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and "because [Fallout] games are suppose to feel lonely." This revealed a split that's always existed between the two different types of players and reveals itself most clearly when discussion of Accessibility in Video Games comes up: there are people who play games purely for the mechanical experience of the game and those that play for the storytelling experience. Those who play games for the mechanical experience and enjoy grinding or item collection often feel frustrated when quests are "repetitive," because to them doing the same things mechanically is where the repetition lies. These people don't see the point in an NPC being dynamic and treat them more like gameplay mechanics rather than characters.

[TheCrimsonCordog]

I must be playing BGS games wrong because I specifically seek them out for that sense of isolation. I always felt like the towns and cities were just places to run errands or sleep. Never really felt attached to their NPCs, always thought that was Bethesda's weakest point. I was surprised so many people considered Fallout to be so defined by NPC interaction. I log hundreds of hours in these games and talk to almost nobody.

[exgiexpcv]

Speak for yourself. I stopped using companions because I couldn't handle them being hurt on my account. Even in a game, it was reminding me of the army. Easier to be alone, like real life.

Those who favor story value NPCs as having a function beyond the mechanical. They want to know and NPCs backstory, they want that almost human interaction with them and to those fans something would be lost if Fallout 76 had no human NPCs in a story about surviving after the apocalypse. With the release of the beta, however, it was revealed that Fallout 76 was still surprising lore-heavy and featured well-known staples of the Fallout series such as holotapes, but all of the people featured on them are dead. Whether or not a player finds that intriguing is a matter of personal taste, but the overall opinion is that it gets tiresome after the first few quests. The lack of human NPCs doesn't mean that the game lacks NPCs a player can interact with altogether. There are robots in Fallout 76, although they aren't true companions in the vein of previous Fallout Games. There are also dogs and players can unlock the ability to tame creatures by equipping certain charisma cards. In his review of Fallout 76, games journalist Joseph Anderson says of the NPCs:

The reaction to Fallout 76's NPCs has been so strong and bizarre that I wonder if the meaning of the term is currently in flux. If enough people agree to a new meaning of a word or term, then that becomes an acceptable norm. An NPC does not have to be a human character. Nor do they have to be directly interactable. Enemies in games are NPCs. Background characters are NPCs. It's quite a broad term, and yet because there are no human NPCs in Fallout 76 that you can have conversations with, most people have agreed that the game has no NPCs period.

While Anderson's definition of NPCs may be strictly true in the sense of NPC meaning "non-playable character," even if most gamers wouldn't classify enemies as NPCs, the crux of people's dissatisfaction with Fallout 76 having no human NPCs stems from the deliberate departure from Bethesda's other games. While many fans wouldn't consider Bethesda great storytellers, given the fact that the dialogue and writing in their games is typically thought of as poor, their games generally have many interactable NPCs that have storylines and lives of their own. Skyrim in particular is known for having many NPCs that propel the story and encourage players to explore the open world that the game has set up.

Skyrim does well by subverting expectations here and there. Most merchants rarely have much to say beyond a rumor about town, but sometimes you stumble on a piece of larger story that merchant’s involved in. It’s the same with any given townsperson. They could offer a sentence or two, or they could have a much larger, juicier dialogue tree of information—encouraging players to at least take a shot at talking to most NPCs just to find out. You never really know what you’re going to get unless you explore.

-Lauren Quigley, A Day in Skyrim: An Analysis of NPCs & Storytelling in Video Games

Since Fallout 76 is an MMORPG, it would only make sense for there to be human NPCs to further the story and lore of the game. At E3 2019, Bethesda announced the Wastelanders DLC would be released in the fall to celebrate the game's first birthday. It centers around the so-called "Wastelanders," Fallout 76's first human NPCs, and co-studio director Tom Mustane has said that Fallout 76's second year will be about "people coming back to reclaim [the wasteland]."

The Beta

Fallout 76's beta started on 28 October 2018 and unlike most betas for video games, featured servers that were only playable at specific times of the day. Bethesda stated that this was because the beta was more about testing server loads than trying to fix bugs, but this proved to be more convenient for some players than others, given the time zone differences. Early reports said Fallout 76 was something of a barren wasteland in addition to being full of bugs.

While bugs are nothing new for game betas and even games early after launch, Fallout 76's beta suffered from several extremely concerning bugs, including one where pressing any button would delete all the game files and one where the beta couldn't be uninstalled after the end of the beta unless users purchased the game. There were also numerous reports of other kinds of difficulties in the official beta thread on the Fallout 76 Reddit ranging from damage numbers changing for no discernable reason to not being able to connect to the server at all. There was also an issue where microphones were always on by default during gameplay and a common complaint was that players felt the guns in the game broke too quickly and they found themselves in a cycle of looting water and food to stay alive so they could loot enough materials to repair their weapons.

Still other fans didn't find themselves concerned with the gameplay or even the bugs riddling the beta, but rather the identity of the game itself. Many people who played the beta felt that the game was "a bunch of really cool ideas hodgepodged together but not quite fleshed out." While this could perhaps be said of any Bethesda game, Fallout 76 suffers from it on an even greater level because it incorporates other people into your experience and other players are unpredictable. Ethan Gach writing for Kotaku said that Fallout 76 feels like two different games depending on whether or not humans are nearby:

This is the other side of Fallout 76, a semi-lawless state of nature where the people with the biggest sticks and the most junk set the tone. Since the consequences for killing or being killed aren’t very onerous, it didn’t make life feel nasty, brutish, and short. But it did remind me that, unlike in previous games, Fallout 76’s world doesn’t belong to me, but to the cumulative effect of my and 23 other people’s actions. Where games like Destiny 2 cordon off competition in specific modes, Fallout 76 sets it loose on the entire world. I have no idea what types of norms, communities, and memes will take shape and govern the game after it releases in November, but it does seem like their existence, for better or worse, will be inescapable.

- Fallout 76 Feels Like Two Different Games

Not all fans were disappointed with the beta however. Many fans were happy with the game presented to them during the beta and couldn't wait to play the game upon release. These people often felt that playing the game resulted in a different experience from what was communicated to fans prior to the beta.

Fallout 76 Cannot Be Uninstalled

While issues with uninstalling Fallout 76 began in the beta, these issues are apparently still present in the released version of the game, with the problem being so prevalent that Bethesda has a FAQ question about it. Users on twitter have expressed a variety of different problems, from the game not uninstalling correctly to being forced to have an internet connection just to uninstall the game.

So I went to uninstall Fallout 76 to make room for other games, and the launcher only uninstalls the executable. It leaves ALL of the 50+gb of textures and soundfiles LMFAO HOW DID THEY DO THIS

- @ForrestFurst

Trying to uninstall Fallout 76: "You must be logged into the http://Bethesda.net Launcher in order to uninstall games". Seems like @bethesda is taking the dystopian future theme very seriously and doesn't want to limit it to just the story of their games.

- @Bunkerbewohner1

Even into January 2019, users were reporting that Fallout 76 was uninstalling itself seemingly at random and still leaving all the files on the harddrive.

Glitches

Bethesda games are known among fans to be glitchy to the point where Todd Howard once saying "it just works" is a meme because Bethesda games often don't work. There's some debate among fans about whether the bugs are helpful or frustrating. Mostly, however, fans have made peace with the fact that Bethesda games have bugs. Some have even come to enjoy the bugs in any given Bethesda game:

I learned later that PC users were able to use console commands to break the game just as thoroughly: tcl to wander around the map at their will, killall to wipe out entire areas, coc testinghall to access, well, everything. It’s not that I didn’t understand the appeal. Someone who wants to walk around in full Daedric armor at level one is committing the same sin against authorial intent that I did every time I killed Sellus Gravius. The difference was that I believed what I still do, to some extent. And that is, if the rules—the software, the world given to you—let you do it, then you can. These commands were exploiting the game from outside; while using glitches, what I was doing, was utilizing what was presented within. The internet and the wider gaming community often disagreed. They may have come to terms with Bethesda’s bugs long ago but debates still remain: Have you really beaten a game if you exploited a glitch? If you “cheated” within parameters that are accessible inside the game? What about outside, as applies to console commands? How grievous is each level of sin, and how by-the-book do you have to be to bypass that? There are essays upon essays dedicated to what should be allowed in speedrunning and other forms of competitive play, where strict rules are key to a level playing field. A pre-teen alone with Morrowind is different. It didn’t matter if I was playing the game right, because I was playing the game.

Given this history, it's safe to say that nobody's problem with Fallout 76 was the simple fact that the game has bugs. Rather, fans were upset with the amount and scope of bugs present in the game which ranged from the usual funny glitches and "hacky" glitches to more serious, game-breaking glitches that Bethesda ignored. Players have also been glitched into inacessible areas of the game and issues with characters getting stuck in permanent loading screens. These issues persisted for months after the game's release leading many players to feel frustrated with the game. Joseph Anderson had this to say about the subject of glitches in Fallout 76:

The glitches are so inescapable that they become part of the game. They embody it. More than ever before, with all the horrible implications that this statement brings, it is true that they aren't really bugs. They're features. Fallout 76 makes Fallout 4 look like a Nintendo game in terms of polish. Bethesda, as far as I'm concerned you committed a crime by releasing this game when it wasn't finished.

Bethesda has fixed a number of bugs since the release of Fallout 76, but there are so many bugs (many of which are game-breaking) that players have brought to Bethesda's attention via the official subreddit or through Bethesda's own community forums that aren't fixed for months. A regular feature on the Reddit Patch Notes threads is a bug list compiled by user ZanthirEAS, which other users often use as a place to share bugs that they've encountered.

[norefillonsleep]

It's always intresting how Bethesda approaches bugs. If it benefits the player hotfix it, if it hinders the player it can wait.

[TheRealStandard]

Or it was easy to fix and people just have a cognitive bias.

[SnoopDogeDoggo]

I cant imagine its so much harder to remove drills and syringers from the legendary drop pool than it was to remove the server wide free food drop from Feed the People. That was done months ago, and we're still waiting on the legendary drop fix.

No Physical Discs

When Fallout 76 shipped, all physical editions came not with a physical disc containing the game but a piece of cardboard containing a download code for the game. Collectors editions only containing what are essentially download codes isn't anything new, this particular incident was merely the last straw for many people, particularly because many fans ordered the physical edition from Amazon because it was discounted when pre-orders were going on.

Later reports stated that Bethesda was refusing to give refunds for players that "downloaded the game," which would essentially mean anybody was in danger of being refused a refund by Bethesda. This resulted in Migliaccio & Rathod LLP deciding to investigate Bethesda for deceptive business practices related to refusing to refund Fallout 76 purchases. Due to arbitration clauses designed to prevent class action lawsuits, Migliaccio & Rathod LLP filed hundreds of individual demand letters to Bethesda while filing the case in California.

Power Armor Edition Controversy

The advertisement for Fallout 76's "Power Armor Edition" which clearly shows a canvas bag.

Among the many editions of Fallout 76 that were available for purchase was the "Power Armor Edition," which retailed for $200USD and was advertised with the image to the right. As you can see in the image, the bag depicted in the image clearly appears to be made of canvas. It looks exactly like the type of sturdy carrying bag you would expect for a military-style piece of equipment. What fans received, however, was a cheap nylon bag with Bethesda citing an "unavailability of materials" as the reason for the change in merchandise.

When fans began complaining about the bait-and-switch nature of being shown a canvas bag and receiving a nylon one, Bethesda responded by altering their description of the Power Armor Edition on their website and offering affected players 500 Atoms. Atoms are Fallout 76's in-game currency and 500 Atoms can be purchased in the game itself for $4.99 in the US. Prices are similar across countries and many fans were disappointed with this response from Bethesda as 500 Atoms won't even allow you to buy the in-game skin that features a canvas bag. Modders, of course, responded by making a mod of the canvas bag that should have shipped with the Power Armor Edition. Concerns were also raised over the fact that accepting the 500 Atoms from Bethesda could mean waiving your legal right to a refund later on and overall fans were upset by this development and Bethesda's response to it.

I paid $200 for a helmet that is worth about $40, a game that went on sale for $40 10 days after launch, a bunch of crap soldiers and a map I don't care about, and a bag I actually wanted to use but turned out to be made out of crap nylon. Yeah, Ill pass on that 500 atoms.

- DesMephisto

Upon being informed by the fans who contacted them about this, Migliaccio & Rathod LLP also began to look into the Power Armor Edition for deceptive trade practices.

Then it was discovered that Bethesda gave various influencers a different canvas bag at an event in early October, before the beta launched. The event, held in a West Virginia hotel known as the Greenbrier, provided attendees with canvas backpacks filled with various Fallout 76 merchandise. This caused significant outrage from fans, and Bethesda finally caved. They announced that they were finalizing the manufacturing plans for replacement bags and that fans could submit a request to receive these canvas bags up until 31 January 2019. This was then extended to 1 March 2019 and then extended again to 3 May 2019.

As people submitted their requests, however, reports started to surface of players receiving emails saying that there would be a 4 to 6 month wait for the production of the canvas bags and that players would be given 500 atoms for the inconvenience. This proved to be true, with the bags finally arriving in June 2019. While it would be nice to say that the bags were without flaw and exactly what fans expected from a six month wait, that would be a lie and the new canvas bags were just as cheap as the nylon ones. Many fans compared the new bags from Bethesda to the similarly valued Destiny 2 collector's edition which also featured a bag of much better quality. It also came with a physical disc.

There were also reports of the Fallout 76: Official Collector's Edition Guide being shipped to consumers with the pages put in backward. In September 2019, reports started surfacing that a collectible Power Armor helmet identical to the one included with the Power Armor Edition, only in Nuka Cola colors, was totally recalled due to a potential mold issue. While initial reports were unclear on how widespread the problem was, given that 20,000 helmet5s were produced and all of them were recalled, in actuality only 32 helmets that were sold and each of those 32 buyers was directly contacted, with the rest of the product simply being pulled from the shelves.

Bethesda Support Security Breach

On 5 December 2018, reports of people being able to see other people's support tickets started surfacing on both Reddit and Bethesda's own community forums. The issue was quickly resolved, but the incident led to many people expressing their further disappointment in how far Bethesda has fallen as a company just since the launch of Fallout 76. It also led to a variety of joking responses:

So, how long before they make their standard apology post offering 500 atoms as compensation?

- falloutthirteen, I am getting your support tickets on my Bethesda account. Now I know where you live.

Take me hooommeeee

No seriously, take me home I don't want this please stop I've had enough I WANNA GO HOME ;_;

-everyone involved with bethesda PR, 2018

- @RaeTheilade

Overall, however, people were upset that Bethesda was silent on the matter aside from a community manager responding to the initial thread on Bethesda's community forums with "Hi guys, we've resolved this issue." Eventually, however, Bethesda confirmed that "no more than 65 customer support tickets contained personal data that may have been exposed" in the approximately 45 minutes the breach was live. This statement, however, doesn't match up with reports from users who were able to view the tickets during the breach and many people speculate the impact of this event might have been much wider than Bethesda is willing to let on.

Lootbox and Atomic Shop Controversy

After the December 11th patch, dataminers compiled their own patch notes and several changes related to "Lunchboxes" caught the attention of fans. Lunchboxes are Fallout's version of lootboxes, which originated in Fallout Shelter where they could be purchased for USD$0.99. Lootboxes are the video game community's current hot button issue, so prior to Fallout 76's release Bethesda was careful to tell players that microtranscations would be limited to cosmetic items and that they could be purchased with atoms, which the game will give to players. Bethesda's statement made it seems as if Fallout 76 would be F2P rather than P2W, which gamers greatly dislike in a game that already costs you money to play. The discovery that Bethesda might be implementing lootboxes into Fallout 76, when they'd already expressly told players that it would happen, understandably made players wary about the datamined changes.

Soon after this was discovered, Bethesda released holiday items in their atom shop that were widely agreed to be overpriced, with a single skin costing the equivalent of USD$20 in atoms. Many fans also commented on the fact that all the items added were also added with a discount already in place, which could be another illegal practice on top of the ones they're already being investigated for.

Hackers eventually uncovered the assets for Lunchboxes in the dev room, and definitive proof that if they were to be implemented that they would be available from the Atomic Shop. The patch notes from December indicated that Lunchboxes would have a "party favor" effect that applied to every player in the area, but currently any hacked Lunchbox items only apply cosmetic effects to weapons. Either way, they have not been implemented into the game proper although a February event introduced a +15 health bonus for every member of a team wearing one of the new Unstoppables skins. While the effect is no longer currently active, the fact that paid items did have an tangible, non-cosmetic effect in the game had some players worried that Bethesda will, in fact, implement Lunchboxes in a future update. Some players even argued that the event was classically P2W, given that every member of the party needed to be wearing a different skin.

As of September 2019, Fallout 76 has not implemented lunchboxes. In April 2019, however, they implement gear repair kits which caused a similar amount of outrage and upset among fans for making the game trend toward P2W. Bethesda officials, however, view repair kits as a strict convenience:

We believed the repair kits were a convenience item for people who didn't want to grind for adhesive and other things, and it was just a way for them to basically shortcut game systems, definitely not pay-to-win. I will argue [with] anybody that [repair kits] makes you win at the game. First of all, you're not really competing with one another, except for in PvP mode. We have all the information, how often people repair, what they repair, and again, you can repair in the game, it's simply just a strict convenience thing. That's my take on repair kits.

- Jeff Gardiner, Bethesda on Fallout 76 mods, selling non-cosmetic items, and community feedback

However many fans don't see it that way. Similar to fan's outrage over Assassin's Creed: Odyssey featuring a "Permanent XP Boost" that costs $9.99USD, thus locking the version of the game some people felt was more in line with the rest of the Assassin's Creed franchise behind a paywall, people felt that repair kits allowed players to skip out on the major gameplay loop of Fallout 76. In Patch 13, Bethesda introduced two further Atomic Shop items that players felt were also edging dangerously close to making Fallout 76 P2W: the Collectron Station and a Refrigerator. Players felt that these items should have been in-game quest rewards, rather than costing 500 atoms for the Collectron Station, which collects nearby items automatically, and 700 atoms for the Refrigerator, which slows spoilage rate of food and drink items placed inside by 50%. Several users pointed toward a post in the subreddit which said that a fridge or freezer "would be an awesome QOL add and would provide some sort of perishable food storage. It could even be put in the atomic shop, give me something to spend my atoms on." A Bethesda employee responded to that post, saying that they passed the suggestion onto the team, leading fans to conclude that Bethesda likely didn't care about the whole of the playerbase as much as the continued flow of income Atomic Shop purchases bring.

[SkeleClark]

The new utilities should be free, $7 for a fridge that slows spoilage by 50% and $5 for a level 3 protectron that collects junk is, although cheap comparatively, still outrageous. This stuff should be implemented for free or have free variants, the coolers and milk machines in the game should also slow spoilage as a free counterpart considering most players already have those. I'm honestly fed up with how they keep sneaking this crap in here and hoping we don't speak up, I love and support this game for it's potential, but the greed has got to stop at some point

[dreamer198611]

To sell this kind of stuff for the prices of full dlc's is so greedy its mindblowing. Automatron DLC for example was 10 dollars at launch, with a fully voiced quest, new allies, new enemies, and a robot crafting mechanic. Now with 12 dollars all they are adding is a freaking fridge and a scrap bot. There is no single justification to add this stuff for money to a game that was sold at 60 dollars.

Cheaters Get Sent To Detention

In late December, reports started surfacing of users being unfairly banned for use of 3rd party programs and mods. Like most things related to Fallout 76, this probably wouldn't be noteworthy if it weren't for the way Bethesda went about banning the players for unclear reasons. Multiple reports were given of the email being sent out to banned players containing the following line:

If you would like to appeal this account closure, we would be willing to accept an essay on "why the use of third-party cheat software is detrimental to an online game community", for our management team to review.

- Bethesda's Email to Banned Fallout 76 Players

It's unclear if anybody actually submitted an essay, but the request for essays was confirmed to be genuine by a Bethesda staff member in a thread on Resetera after they said that would not be needing essays in order to appeal a ban. Shortly afterward, users started being banned from Fallout 76 for a different reason entirely: they found and accessed an area in the game known as the "developer room." Essentially, it's an area for developers to test items and typically contains a copy of every item in the game - in this case, including items that hadn't been released yet (including the lunchboxes mentioned above) and Fallout 76's only human NPC, named Wooby. Bethesda sent out a similar email to users found to have accessed this dev room:

If any of the characters on this account have possibly visited one of these locations, please describe the way it was accessed in a reply to this email. That detail should provide the information necessary for us to correct any corruption issues on this side and safely release this account and return these characters to the world.

- Bethesda's Email to Banned Fallout 76 Players

Some users applauded Bethesda's stance on cheating, while others merely responded that this was another case of Bethesda fucking up their own game. A common question among people was why Bethesda would ship Fallout 76 with a dev room in the first place, given that they know their community is prone to modding their games and using glitches present in the game to gain access to areas they shouldn't be in. Another was disbelief that Bethesda were essentially relying on the banned players to tell them how they were accessing the dev room so they could prevent it in the future, rather than trying to solve the problem on their own.

Harmless enough in a single player game that you might not bother (an 'easter egg' for anyone that does come across it) - but a multiplayer online game has much greater need to be much stricter in controlling its users. As it is, Bethesda's entire approach to Fallout 76 being a multiplayer game is the same as if we held a national-level football match but just trusted the players to carry on without any referees or linesmen and just asked them for what the score was after the game and went with whatever was said first.

- DoctorOak on a Eurogamer Article

This controversy continued with the most dedicated players of Fallout 76 being banned for having an excess of 100,000 of specific items over a 30 day period. There was a lot of confusion and conflicting information regarding who or what caused this wave of banned users, and one of the major issues was that Bethesda did not send out emails informing people of the bans or address the issue in an easily accessible way. One of the banned users posted on Reddit, saying that he just plays a lot and therefore has accumulated a lot of ammo and is being unfairly targeted by whatever method Bethesda is using to ferret out these supposed cheaters.

I cannot be more adamant that I have never once owned an item in excess of 100,000 and I believe I have been banned due to others reporting me. I often use 2 accounts to transfer items between my characters. I even detail it in the comments of the above reddit post how and why I do this. My belief is that people see a level 450+ player trading with a level 2 character and immediately think REPORT HIM REPORT HIM REPORT HIM. I even get some players who harass me when I'm attempting to trade items.

- Glorf12 on Banned. I'm the 900 hours played guy.

Much was made of these claims, and a lot of math was done to try and figure out if the claims were even possible or feasible. Seriously, so much math. Bethesda responded to the issue with more clarification on why players were banned and assuring that the ban would be lifted later when a patch was put into place, but did so on their community forums rather than on somewhere more visible like their support twitter or their subreddit.

The items that resulted in these account actions were designed to be rare in-game, and we’re confident that players who acquired them in these massive quantities did not obtain them using legitimate means. Those who are playing the game normally, even if they craft a lot of items, can rest assured that we will not deactivate or suspend their accounts for legitimate play.

- Regarding "This Account is not Authorized. [4:8:2000]" Messages on Login

By March, there were unconfirmed reports that the dev room had been removed from the game.

Nuka Dark Rum Controversy

A promo image for Nuka Dark Rum.

Long before the game was released, during the influencer event with the canvas bags, Bethesda announced Nuka Dark Rum (website now non-functional), a tie-in product that would be bottled by Silver Screen Bottling Company. The pre-order price for this product was $79.99 on Liquorama, which some noted to be a steep price since a 750ml bottle of Bacardi is far less expensive. Still, Nuka Dark Rum was considered to be a premium collector's item for fans, rather than something every Fallout fan would need, and the price tag didn't discourage many fans from pre-ordering Nuka Dark Rum under the assumption that the bottle could be displayed on a bar as a collector's item even after it was empty.

Early promo photos of the product, like the one shown to the left, showed what many believed to be a mock-up of nice matte glass bottle since it was clear the photos weren't of the final product. Very late into the production of Nuka Dark Rum, however, fans were informed by Silver Screen Bottling Company's video that the rum would ship in a regular glass bottle with a plastic outer shell. Many fans felt misled by this development, particularly in light of every other problem Fallout 76 has encountered, and while some people found the outrage to be the product of people looking for further reasons to criticize Bethesda, most people took it to be a reasonable complaint. Much like with the canvas bag, modders responded by immediately creating a Nuka-Dark Rum mod to be used withing the game itself.

In response to heavy criticism from fans, the owner of Silver Screen Bottling, Ryan McElveen, released a statement on their website about the amount of effort that was put into creating a premium product that fans could feel proud to display:

The packaging of Nuka Dark Rum was a design that was months in the making and we went to great lengths to ensure that no corners were cut. It cost over 2X what it would have if we would have simply cast a glass mold. We went through many prototypes. In fact, in all, we had four different iterations of the design, two of which were glass exteriors. We determined that a glass bottle alone would not have been dramatic enough for the look we wanted. We wanted something big and bold for the loyal Fallout fanbase – something that honored the game. Over 100 hours were spent just writing the code to create the 3D-printed prototype of the shells. The “bottle cap” which is actually an integrated cork/cap, was engineered and re-engineered several times to ensure it fit on the bottle in a manner that looked exactly the way it is supposed to inside of a cork finished bottle (not a screw cap). A design created, specifically, for rum. The idea was that the bottle was housed in a “vault of its own.”

Side view of the Nuka Dark Rum bottle.

Fans were not overly impressed with this statement, with responses ranging from disbelief that a plastic bottle was more expensive to produce than glass to seriously questioning if it could ever take 100 hours to program a 3D printing program of laughably bad quality, given that the seams on the bottle are blatantly visible.

"We deliberately spent more money on shitty plastic than cheap glass and at least decent rum" Seriously, like, they couldn't have made the cheap glass bottle and then partnered with Capt Morgan or Bacardi for a decent rum? How the hell do some people have a business?

- airplanenut89 in a comment on YongYea's video

To further add insult to injury as well, the "glass is too expensive to mass produce" Is another bs excuse as well considering a 3D mold print of a glass bottle of that design (and for the sake of matching its 750ml bottle inside the plastic case) A 750ml glass bottle with a few bits of excess glass IE: the arms for the rocket bottle, would cost around 0.05 to 0.16 cents per bottle made, and it's really sad to see how much of a blatant cash grab this has become. I'm thankful I didn't get either fallout 76, or nuka cola dark, and I hope the ones who did buy either one honestly get their money back or at least file a law suit against bethesda for fraud by omission (I think that's the correct term here) But as it stands now, the grave these people keep digging with their golden guilded shovels is only getting deeper and their rope to safety is breaking

- Kanon in a comment on YongYea's video

Taste tests ranged from people saying it was decent to not particularly positive, with most people agreeing that the rum was incredibly overpriced for the $80USD price tag and 35% alcohol content. There were also reports of people receiving multiple bottles they didn't order.

Update Problems

December Patches

December brought an update to Fallout 76 that was meant to increase the stability of the servers as well as several assorted bugs. Players soon discovered that there were several unannounced game balance changes were also in the patch, chief among a handful of changes that made game progression harder. Some of these changes were ones players noticed immediately but some were debatable until Bethesda updated the patch notes several days later. This resulted in Bethesda representatives responding to the initial Reddit post about the issues saying that they were going to work on better patch notes and would "have more information for you all ASAP."

Response to Bethesda's platitudes was lukewarm at best, with many feeling that Bethesda was quickly running out of goodwill from everybody. Players also felt that Bethesda was focusing on the wrong issues, given that there's still several game-breaking bugs that hadn't been addressed yet and the December 4th patch was supposed to be primarily focused on game balances.

It seems like your priorities are askew; why are you fiddling with the minutiae of balance (poorly) when there are aspects of the very framework of the game that are not working correctly? Does it really matter if we get a little more steel at a time when players can dupe legendaries en masse and carry an infinite amount of them? Does it really matter if they can dupe legendaries when half the time the shots won't count, and you've inexplicably increased the HP of random enemies?

- yaxkukmo, Reddit

The December 4th patch also brought widespread reports of players being unable to log in to the game at all. Another patch was released on December 11 which touted "ultrawide" resolution support for 21:9 aspect ratios. Players soon found, however, that Bethesda's official ultrawide mode was merely an official version of a hacky trick people were using to get 21:9 resolution in the game already that results in oddly stretched UI and wonky animations. Worse yet, the particular trick that Bethesda implemented has been used since Fallout 4 and was fixed by the modding community. Of course, the modding community also took to fixing Fallout 76's crappy ultrawide mode, resulting in the Imperfect 21x9 mod.

January Patches

Fallout 76 rang in the new year by immediately needing to be patched because the weekly reset of the game glitched out the nuke silos and set their timers to 9,999 hours and stopped spawning the NPCs who give out the codes to access the silos. To their credit, Bethesda did fix the issue within a day but it left many people wondering why the issue happened in the first place.

That turned into calling for a change in the entire Fallout 76 dev team, as a game patch released later in January reintroduced old bugs back into the game, forcing Bethesda to temporarily take Fallout 76 offline to fix the issue. The path essentially rolled back the game to an earlier version where items were heavier and there were issues with loading because development teams weren't working with the same version of the game. Fans were angry that a supposedly triple-A game would even allow bugs to be reintroduced to the game while still not fixing their legitimate concerns with aspects of the game such as inventory management.

I uninstalled a while back and I lurk here waiting for patch notes with big improvements one day. But honestly you're right, it's probably gonna be until 2020. They're great at updating the atom store with things, and not as fast doing the bug and exploit fixes or quality of life things like inventory increases. Customer support was also terrible when I asked about different things: performance issues, visual bugs, general issues. This game was fun for the first couple of hours, and then you get to the part where you realize PvP is horribly balanced, lots of exploits like bobblehead stacking & melee slap damage being ridiculous. And for pve, scorch queen fight will consistently disconnect & has a very random loot table (if she drops anything at all) So what is end game? What will be the new content to wait & loot for? Nothing official right now, and now they roll back the game this patch to a worse one apparently.

- shaielzafine in a comment on Reddit

Same. I uninstalled a while back and haven't played in a month. I do check here for updates in case it's ever worth reinstalling and there's not any good ones today. Nothing for inventory / stash issues. Nothing new for end game. Not enough quality of life improvements. At the start, I shrugged off the bugs as "growing pains", but literally nobody in my friend group / guild even plays anymore. We used to have 10-15 people zerging scorchbeasts and we'd wait to fill up a single server. There's nothing to do after multiple SBQ kills (with disconnects and no loot half the time) and there's too many frustrating bugs and exploits (esp. for PvP). People keep defending this game like Bethesda did such a good job releasing this half done game or patching huge issues with bandaids. Well, they did the minimum viable product and sold the buggy mess to customers. Since they don't refund, I'm waiting for actual fixes to the ongoing issues and waiting for new content that isn't pvp.

- therapytroubles in a comment on Reddit

February Patch

The February 19 patch was a welcome change for fans, given that it introduced several fixes and improvements that the playerbase has been asking for since day 1. These included storage of the stash being expanded from 600 to 800 pounds and power armor no longer selecting a fusion core to use at random, which many players were happy about, and overall response to the patch was not as negative as the response to previous patches. However, players were still experiencing frustrating bugs and glitches such as legendary enemies not dropping the correct loot, issues with sneaking behavior, and issues with the targeting HUD.

Wild Appalachia Patches

March 13 brought the beginning of first major expansion to Fallout 76 with patch 7, which introduced a new questline and a seasonal event quest. Response to the patch was overwhelming positive, with many players excited about smaller changes to the game such as the re-introduction of radios for a player's base camp and the ability to brew and distill as a part of the crafting system. Patch 7.5, released March 26, continued the improvements that 7 introduced, giving players a brand new game mode and fixing the issue many players had where Fallout 76 felt like two different games. Players could now choose from "Adventure Mode," where damage is reduced unless a player is marked as hostile, or "Survival Mode," which focused more on PVP and competition between players.

Over the next two months, the release of Wild Appalachia continued with Patch 8, released on April 9; Patch 8.5, released on April 23; Patch 9, released on May 7; and Patch 9.5, released May 21. While overall player response to the content of the DLC aspects of Wild Appalachia was positive, many players still found Fallout 76 to be a somewhat buggy mess and were frustrated by Bethesda's lack of response on many issues. In particular, users were frustrated with a bug that caused 3-star wooden armor to become 1-star wooden armor upon restarting the game. Many players were also upset by the "fix" of removing the ability to complete survival mode quests in adventure mode, as adventure mode has no equivalent function and the change left players who primarily or exclusively play adventure mode unable to gain the rewards granted for finishing survival mode's quests.

[ArgentRabbit]

I am disappointed. I liked us Adventure Mode ppl being able to complete the Survival challenges and get the rewards, instead of missing out. A lot of us have no interest or intention to go into PvP but it feels like we're missing out on getting a neat reward that isn't available in Adventure Mode playing. If Adventure Mode got a weekly reward challenge or something that'd be nice.

[Siniztah]

I completely agree about it not being fun that survival challenge rewards get cut from adventure mode. Hear me out here: Survival mode is where all the assholes went that couldn't see any reason to leave anyone or their camps alone. Now they get rewards for being like that when good, reasonable, civil players get left out? LAME.

Nuclear Winter Patches

Patch 10, released June 10, marked the introduction of a new game mods to Fallout 76: Nuclear Winter, a battle royale-style free for all mode. The release was considered a "sneak peek," and response to the new mode was generally positive with several people saying that although they didn't generally enjoy battle royale modes, Nuclear Winter was extremely fun and engaging.

I don't do any kind of fps pvp. I play some league of legends and some wow pvp, 100% a different game.

I was skeptical going into this. Fallout76 is my relaxed game. I play with two friends, we do all the quests and stuff together. I play a medic type with shotguns, one girl is the tank, other girl is the sniper. Works for us.

But I think I played a dozen games of Nuclear Winter this morning. I suck but it's really fun. Like, run for your lives, see how long you can survive. :D I sat behind a tree with a shotgun trying to hold my breath in as only 3 more players on the map came looking for me. @-@

- Qthbert, Nuclear winter is amazing

Nuclear Winter was officially released as in beta during Patch 10.5, released June 10, and further improvements to Nuclear Winter were added in Patch 11, released July 16. However, Bethesda's focus on Nuclear Winter left many fans worried that Bethesda would abandon adventure mode. While there were many fixes to all three game modes in Patch 11, released July 16, many players felt that the overall patch was terrible and addressed none of the issues that had been put forth to Bethesda through the subreddit and their community forums.

[deleted user]

Ive been here since day 1 of beta. Ive experienced everything this game has done. This patch was the biggest slap in the face in the games history. There are so many bugs and issues that have existed and been "known" since the first few weeks. And this patch focued on fixing like 5 and introducing extremely bad ones.

Legendaries not dropping loot has existed since day 1. The fact that I logged in this morning, cleared out West-Tek and had 5 enemies not drop loot tells me that Bethesda do not play their game.

In a previous Inside the Vault they state something like "We had to turn off the test servers for Nuclear Winter to make our devs get back to work because they had so much fun". This is the biggest issue the game has. The devs themselves prefer Nuclear Winter to the rest of the game.

This is not fallout anymore. Its an mmo-lite sandbox looter shooter with a fallout skin, that keeps on releasing cosmetic items that are not fallout related. Its all color, no substance.

[UnhappyImp]

As have I, been here since the BETA (that was honestly a 'play it now' week rather then an actual BETA..), and I wholly agree that this patch has been a mess. Some of the changes are well deserved and needed but the nerfs to atom points for lowbie characters and the handmade rifle getting a mag nerf that makes little sense tells me the Devs are sometimes winging it to see what happens. Also the 10mm smg has a drum mag now (Watoga BoS trader) but still no sights / scopes. There's so much missing that'd make things a little better (mods for a MAJORITY of the new weapons would be a start + dozens of other things I could list from past posts that'd take an hour to document).

As for Nuclear Winter, I call hogwash on that remark because I'm level 64 and have played tons of matches with very experienced players while versing people that are using mods / cheats that give them an advantage. If the Devs truly preferred NW they would've shut off the testing phase to focus on making an anti-cheat rather then letting the cheaters do what they want.

All in all, agree with your post. So much needs to be fixed every time they update...

Still other players expressed that while many players were encountering bugs their experience playing Fallout 76 was much different:

[ONEMANCLAN530]

I don't understand what their play testers are doing. How is this stuff that is immediately apparent being missed?

[gilpo1]

Not trolling, just sharing a perspective. I played for 5 hours last night and I didn't notice any bugs or problems. The legendaries I killed all had appropriate loot. My PA was just as they said it would be and was a minor inconvenience to sort out. Had no issue trading with anyone and my vending machines ran a healthy business. Gameplay was smooth and my server never crashed. Was one of the best play sessions I've had in weeks. The only problem I did have was the game locked up when I exited to desktop. So it would seem that bug is back. I suspect the causes for some of these bugs people are finding may be very complex and you'd need thousands of testers to reveal them. I'm guessing they probably have a dozen or less people testing these and that's just not enough. The best solution would be to set up beta servers that you can opt in to.

Patch 11.5, released August 1, had a similar fan reaction with players continuing to be disappointed that game breaking bugs were not being addressed. Several bugs were "on Bethesda radar," according to comments made in the subreddit by Bethesda employees, but the ETA on when they would be fixed was something of a moving goalpost and many bugs were brought to Bethesda's attention at or around launch with no fixes in sight almost a year into the game's lifespan and making it clear that anyone who accused Bethesda of releasing an unfinished product was, in fact, probably correct. The disaster of Fallout 76's development, with patches reintroducing bugs that had already been fixed, has left a sour taste in many players mouths given that Bethesda gives the atom shop regular updates and spend their time making useless fixes like "[replacing] a lightbulb above one of the bathroom stalls in Watoga High School." This has led some users to speculate that Bethesda may be fixing things to inflate their list of fixes, with everyone coming to the conclusion that Bethesda is largely ignoring their own playerbase.

Patch 12, released August 20, marked the introduction of vault raids. Players felt it was extremely difficult and not worth the resource drain to complete while still wondering why Bethesda was refusing to address game breaking bugs. A streamer by the name of Kevduit was livestreaming the raid on the day of release when one of his teammates was hit by a bug which causes player characters to become trapped in their power armor, thus illustrating the need for Bethesda to fix bugs that have been present since the beta. One user on the Fallout 76 subreddit said of Patch 12: "'Fixed bug that caused game to lock up when exiting power armor; should be the only note for Patch 13", but Patch 13, released on September 10, did not contain a fix for the issue. Instead, Bethesda gave players this:

Additionally, we are still actively working to address the control lock that can occur when exiting Power Armor and plan to release a hotfix as soon as possible once we are confident that our fix will fully resolve this issue. Thank you for your continued patience.

Fallout 1st

On 23 Oct 2019 Bethesda announced "Fallout 1st," a premium membership service that would afford players extra benefits for $12.99USD a month or $99.99 dollars a year. These benefits included private servers and a monthly stipend of 1650 atoms, potentially making the monthly cost of the subscription worthwhile for players who wanted those features, but since the game is still somewhat of a buggy, unplayable mess fans were understandably unhappy with this announcement especially after the news that the Wastelanders DLC was being pushed back to a 2020 release date. While some players agreed with the assessment that Fallout First wasn't a terrible price point and offered many desirable features for that price point, others thought it felt like an out of season April Fool's joke and still others found the subscription indefensible since it costs significantly more than the similar monthly service Xbox Live and the private server benefit that Bethesda is touting isn't actually a private server so much as it is a private session. Overall, many players felt the move to a subscription-based model was, perhaps, not the best plan.

Let’s start off with me, big ol’ Fallout fan, new generation player started with 3 then NV and 4 loved them all, background over.

I was always one to defend Fallout 76, though thick and thin though fire and brimstone I was there defending this broken game... why? Because I loved it, then Bethesda wanted to get greedier and greedier, showing us there True self

At first it seems Fallout 1st is only for those who want a private sever, until you realize they locked something they know everyone will want behind there sleezy paywall, a character outfit from a game that they had no say in.

It’s funny honestly, keep Appalachia Bethesda, scorched, whatever new monster of the week there is.. I’m heading to Nevada, happy trails.

- Fallout first, how Bethesda opened my eyes.

The fact that both the survival tent and Ranger armor skin were locked behind a paywall also made people angry, since both were community ideas leading to further complaints that Bethesda was merely taking the community's ideas and forcing them to be paid for. Other concerns stemmed from the fact that a major benefit of the Fallout First subscription, an unlimited Scrapbox, could be used in both public and private servers. This stemmed from the fact that Bethesda repeatedly denied the playerbase stash limit increases, citing server stability issues, despite the fact that scrap was potentially never supposed to count against the stash weight. There was also the fact that the scrapbox would seemingly remain even after a subscription ran out, leading many to say they would pay for a single month and then cancel.

[IronKr]

Wait... I thought our stash size on public was limited because the servers couldn’t handle it? The limited stash size can be really crippling in this game as the crafting/repair is so material intensive, it isn’t something players should be having to pay for just to make the gameplay experience bearable.

[Morgeon]

Any truth to stash items affecting server stability happens outside of the scrapper junk. There are only 33 scrap items. The number next to it is just that, a number. It doesn’t matter if I have 1 ballistic fiber or 5000, it puts the same stress on the server either way. Any actual affect on servers comes from the individual items in the stash like 5 handmades each with different mods/legendary effects/levels etc. if it doesn’t stack, that’s where your performance could suffer.

All that said, there no real way it should matter regardless. Their hardware should be more than up to the task of handling huge storage.

Many users found the release date of this latest PR disaster ironic, as October 23 is the in-game date of the nuke that forced people into the vaults being launched.

Further Resources

• Joseph Anderson Vs Fallout 76 by Joseph Anderson
• The Fall of 76 by Internet Historian
• Fallout 76 - What Happened? by Matt McMuscles
• Fallout 76 still has a fan base that’s committed to the core on Polygon
• The bounty hunters of Fallout 76 will kill anyone you want, for a price on Polygon

References

✪ This article was featured on the Fanlore main page in 2019
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