Will Fallout 76 Stress Test Be on Again
With Fallout 76's Steel Reign expansion releasing today, the development team at Bethesda spoke to Newsweek about the hard lessons they have learned since the game's notoriously shaky launch and why at present is the all-time time to give information technology another chance.
Fallout 76 had a shoddy release back in October 2018. Upon launch, the game was riddled with frustrating bugs, server issues and balancing problems. Not to mention it was also lacking the content that many expected to see from a title bearing the Fallout name.
Prior to 76, the franchise was renowned for its immersive open worlds and branching storylines, but the online multiplayer feel had neither of these things. In fact, it did not even have NPCs for you to interact with at the showtime, other than a few stationary robots that merely existed to hand out quests.
Many rapidly abandoned the live-service after realizing that it not only failed to alive up to the standard of Fallout, simply as well of a finished product in general. There were simply too many features missing at launch, and everything that was included felt very rough around the edges.
Fans were quick to express their disapproval, with the game receiving incredibly low user ratings beyond a number of different aggregate sites, including Metacritic where the base version still sits at an abysmal 2.eight. Professional reviewers were not much kinder, as the championship speedily became Bethesda's worst-scoring game in history, with Newsweek's own review deeming it "Bad, bland and disrepair."
The state of affairs became so contentious that ZeniMax Media (Bethesda's parent company) were legally obligated to offer refunds to Australian customers, due to the severe technical faults.
Listening to 'Fallout 76' Histrion Feedback
It is worth noting that Bethesda themselves are cognizant of this backlash and even agree with it to some extent. Speaking to Newsweek at a roundtable interview, Fallout 76's design director, Mark Tucker, admitted that his priority over the final couple of years has been to rehabilitate the game's image.
He said: "We listened to the feedback of 'this doesn't feel like a Fallout game' [and] since launch, we have made significant changes."
Indeed, Fallout 76 has received upwards of 25 major updates in the intervening years, delivering a lot of the content that many felt was initially missing. Among other things, at that place are now daily ops, beefier questlines, warring factions to choose between, and more complex RPG elements.
Tucker continued: "This is now a very story-driven game. You're gonna have some great interactions with NPCs and some interesting choices. In that location's a lot of deep storytelling going on."
Jeff Gardiner, lead producer for Fallout 76, echoed these sentiments, adding: "If you are a story fan, or a traditional RPG fan similar I am myself, there is a lot [at present] for you to come and explore. So please spring in and give us a shot."
Fixing The 'Fallout 76' Bugs and Server Problems
The lacklustre narrative was non the merely affair that tarnished Fallout 76'due south reputation, as the championship was also plagued with a litany of technical issues.
Gardiner was rather aboveboard on this subject, acknowledging those early days of the game were a "troubled" time. He said: "We have fixed a bunch of bugs and stability issues that were at launch I'll be honest. The most valuable lesson we learned [from this] was to apparently beta exam things and become information technology in front of people before we launch."
On a related annotation, Gardiner points to the introduction of a Public Examination Server (PTS) every bit the real turning indicate for Fallout 76. For context, this is essentially an environment that allows gamers to preview updates and new content prior to information technology being added to the game's live server. It is a bit like early on admission, in the sense that information technology allows the development team to collate feedback and tweak updates earlier they are rolled out to the full general public.
Speaking about the impact of the PTS, Gardiner said: "If I had to point to a unmarried affair that was a sea change for us, exterior of the Wastelanders expansion, information technology was actually the PTS server. We [used it] to rail operation, crashes and other issues that are easier for us to observe if we are stress testing with larger populations [doing] things that our own QA testers can't do in 8-hour sessions."
Tucker agreed with this signal, adding: "Once you have more than people playing the game, you lot're going to see more things cropping upwardly. And that has enabled u.s. to address some pretty disquisitional bugs that nosotros may not have caught [otherwise]."
Not only has the PTS allowed Bethesda to roll out more stable fixes to Fallout 76, but it has too informed some of their contempo design choices. For example, feedback from the PTS was used to refine the new legendary crafting system, as well as the legendary perks.
Speaking most the latter, Tucker said: "Nosotros got so much criticism we actually delayed the release of legendary perks [and] went back to the cartoon board. Nosotros added quite a few new perks, we removed some that players didn't find very useful, and nosotros made some significant balance changes to others."
Helping Teams Finally Play Together
In addition to the public test server, the developers also identified the One Wasteland For All release as i of the main reasons that now is a good time to jump back into Fallout 76.
Inspired past the One Tamriel expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online, this patch made it so that enemies scale appropriately to your character, regardless of where you are situated on the map. Speaking well-nigh the update, Tucker said: "For those who are trying to become their friends back in, we have made some really positive changes to make it easier for them to play together.
"[1 Wasteland] opens up the world for older players because now the lower-level places volition still nowadays a challenge for them. We're basically levelling creatures up to your level, merely it is relative to you. Then that means, you lot could be level 300 and your friend could be level 5 and you can withal play together."
"I recall that's actually of import, especially for the players who take stuck with u.s.a. and want to go their friends dorsum in. They don't have to worry about rerolling a new character."
Winning Fans Back
For Gardiner, bringing Fallout 76 to the Xbox Game Laissez passer was an opportunity to get a lot of fresh eyes on the new-and-improved release and win people over. He said: "76 has come a long way. Nosotros did put it up on Game Pass, long prior to the announcement of the [Microsoft] acquisition and it'southward still there. It bounces upwards and downwardly in the summit x most played.
"I call back it's part of the reason that the game's success has changed, because the sentiment online inverse, and people were really playing it. For the last few years [we have] browbeaten all of our goals on many levels, in terms of central performance indicators like session time, number of players, stability and sentiment."
Reflecting on the game's overall development journey, Gardiner said: "I don't want to audio similar nosotros're tooting our ain horn here. The fans that accept stuck with us accept fabricated this game very successful [and] even through the troubled times [they gave] us a chance to correct the ship and continue moving forrard. I am super grateful forever for that".
Fallout 76 is still being supplied with new content. Today marks the launch of the latest "Steel Reign" addition, which volition exist followed past three more major updates this year.
Meanwhile, 2022 will see the debut of a series of newly-announced expansions for the game, entitled Fallout: Expeditions. These will be story-driven DLCs that have the player out of the Appalachia Mountain range and into diverse neighboring locations, like the Pitt.
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Source: https://www.newsweek.com/fallout-76-steel-reign-bethesda-bug-fixes-story-updates-expansions-1605235
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