Fallout 76 – Over Five Years Later

Amazon’s Fallout TV show is now available and exposes many to the brilliantly dark quirkiness of its post-apocalyptic universe. Not only has it attracted several new players who have never touched a Fallout game before, but encouraged long-time fans to revisit the games and relive the insanity of the wasteland. Fallout 3 and 4 are seeing more players on Steam, but perhaps the most interesting is Fallout 76.

As an online-only survival action RPG, it launched to severely negative reviews in November 2018. On top of criticism for watering down the franchise and stripping away its essential elements – like human NPCs, choices and consequences, and more – it was also rife with multiple game-breaking bugs, crashes and glitches. Long-time players can attest to its myriad of issues, whether they were weighed down by bobby pins or watching servers crash because they couldn’t handle multiple nukes going off.

Over five years later, it’s in a completely different state. It achieved a new peak concurrent total on Steam with 41,193 players. Granted, you could chalk this up to the ongoing free week, but it crossed 17 million players in December 2023. While it’s certainly not perfect, the question is: How much has changed in Fallout 76?

While it wasn’t the first major post-launch update, Wastelanders is perhaps its most important. Wild Appalachia brought in new seasonal events, Survival mode with more challenging PvP, a Legendary vendor (who could scrap unwanted items), Pioneer Scouts quests, and the ProSnap Deluxe camera for snapping in-game shots. However, Fallout 76 was still troubled, technically and in terms of gameplay. Bethesda also did it no favors when it integrated improved Repair Kits into the cash shop, raising pay-to-win concerns (if the high price of premium cosmetics wasn’t bad enough).

Nuclear Winter followed in June 2019, with a free trial adding a 52-player battle royale mode. The problem, yet again, is that it exposed Fallout 76’s fundamental gameplay issues and PvP. It also didn’t help that the market was saturated with other battle royale games. When the update dropped in August 2019, Bethesda added Vault Raids, end-game four-player instanced dungeons which could award new armor sets. Not terrible, but far from the PvE content that long-time fans expected.

Then there was the debacle surrounding Fallout 1st – a subscription service launched in October 2019 for $12.99 monthly and $99.99 yearly, which provided a Scrapbox for storing all your crafting components, a Survival Tent to use as a free fast travel point, and oh, Private Worlds. Remember those private servers that Bethesda promised? You had to pay to access them, and they supported up to eight players and didn’t offer mods on release. It went down about as well as you’d expect from the community.

Thankfully, on April 14th, 2020, after multiple delays and going over budget, Wastelanders finally went live. Set one year after Vault 76 opened, it marked the arrival of human NPCs – a true sight for sore eyes. The sweeping update added a proper dialogue system and a new reputation system for the two new factions, each with unique quests and bases. Furthermore, your choices actually had an impact, as you could side with the Settlers or Raiders. You also had several new companions with quests, not to mention repeatable radiant quests.

This was on top of all the new items, enemies, weapons, plans, random encounters and much more. You could also earn Gold Bullion, used to purchase items from the now-shuttered Vault Raids. It’s worth noting that Fallout 76’s technical state still wasn’t the best, especially on consoles where frame rate drops, texture pop-ins, bugs, and glitches were still prevalent.

However, Wastelanders was the first real update that made the game feel like Fallout – a post-apocalyptic world gone mad with interesting NPCs and unique choices to make, even if the quest design still needed improvements. And it was free, which is the case with all updates but even more special given its expansion-sized nature.

The Legendary Run launched in June 2020 and added another significant new feature to the game – Seasons. Yes, that means a battle pass to rank up, but it was presented as this neat little board game where you had to guide Captain Cosmos to the finish line before the antagonistic Dr. Zorbo and free-for-all players.

Players could unlock new cosmetics, Caps, Atoms to spend in the store, weapons, paint jobs, and more. Considering how the previous Challenges system wasn’t cutting it, Seasons were a nice way to introduce new transitional content and features on top of cosmetics to earn.

New story content would have been appreciated, but instead, Bethesda’s next big update introduced One Wasteland for All. Players could pick up Legendary Perks and partake in new Daily Ops missions, but the bigger story is the game-wide rebalance, where enemies would now scale with player level. While this sounds annoying, it meant players could team together without limits. Furthermore, there wouldn’t be constraints on the content you wanted to experience (with rewards scaling accordingly).

Though it took some time for players to adjust, especially en route to level 50, high-level players could now view the whole and earn some decent loot. It also meant that newcomers could explore the world in earnest instead of remaining confined to a small section to level up and hopefully not die to all the high-level enemies outside of it.

In November 2020, those craving new content witnessed the arrival of Steel Dawn, containing the first part of the Brotherhood of Steel questline. The faction had returned to Appalachia with fresh story quests, items, weapons and more to earn. Players once again had a choice – help or hinder the Brotherhood – while learning their true purpose. Shelters were also introduced, providing instanced interiors separate from one’s C.A.M.P. with exclusive decorations and parts.

Another major quality of life change concerned food and water. While still providing positive benefits when fed or hydrated, starving or becoming dehydrated wouldn’t affect players negatively. Maybe it de-emphasizes the survival elements, but the benefits of eating food and drinking water were still worth pursuing.

The Brotherhood of Steel story would conclude in Steel Reign, launched in July 2021, and tossing Super Mutants into the mix as the faction faces internal conflicts. It also changed the Legendary crafting system, allowing players to re-roll their effects and even upgrade gear and weapons to the Legendary tier (with some exceptions). You could even craft Legendary Power Armor, with the effects retroactive for existing sets.

Fallout Worlds was next, launching in September 2021 and finally laying Nuclear Winter to rest. However, it also made two massive changes to notorious Private Worlds. First is the addition of Public Worlds created by the development team with unique settings, like no fall damage, no PvP, open PvP (with players dropping more loot on death), unlimited ammo, “extreme dismemberment”, and even more challenges. They would rotate every month, and while not a substitute for mods, Public Worlds allowed non-Fallout 1st subscribers to get in on the action.

Custom Worlds remained exclusive to 1st subscribers with the freedom to modify their worlds as they saw fit. C.A.M.P. Budgets could be increased or lowered, snapping and collision restrictions turned off, damage reduced or increased and so on. You could even modify the weather and apply a filter from photo mode to the visuals for that Fallout look and feel.

Fallout 76 continued growing over multiple new updates, introducing new seasonal events, the ability to earn SCORE (necessary for increasing one’s seasonal rank) from Public and Custom Worlds, public events, and much more. Expeditions: The Pitt would serve as the next big content update, allowing players to venture to The Pitt from Fallout 3 in new Expeditions.

These are new activities in locations outside of Appalachia, with unique zones and rewards, which could be tackled alone or with friends. Of course, players also dealt with new factions – like the Union and the Fanatics – while unlocking new gear and weapons. The next update introduced Nuka-World on Tour, bringing the Fallout 4 DLC to Appalachia as a roadshow with carnival games, new characters, Public Events and a new region boss.

After two more updates, which saw new Cryptids, Public Events and Daily Ops changes, Atlantic City Boardwalk Paradise would arrive in December 2023 and add some new Expeditions that saw players venturing to Atlantic City. Several new locations were added to the starting Forest region, and new players could now skip a sizable portion of the grind and start at level 20 after leaving Vault 76.

Atlantic City America’s Playground is the most recent update, as it sees players venturing to the location to tackle the threat of the Overgrown. New Expeditions became available in The Pitt and Atlantic City, alongside the option to explore the latter more freely and a new questline in Appalachia. Granted, not every change has been widely accepted lately, like the Seasons Pass system, which now features a page-like format for unlocking seasonal rewards, with more freedom to unlock what you want via tickets.

Fallout 1st members can get premium rewards (with the Seasons Pass included in the cost), but non-subscribers can also pay Atoms for the same. While it’s probably aimed at those who accumulated Atoms without spending any money, many feel that it’s more practical to buy Fallout 1st, given all of the other benefits (including monthly Atoms). It’s a weird system, to be sure.

Regardless of which side of the fence you sit, whether it’s abject hate for everything that Fallout 76 stands for or embracing life in the Appalachia for hundreds of hours, there’s no denying that the experience is far better than at launch. With hundreds of hours of content, ongoing storylines, improved combat and plenty to explore, it’s been quite the journey. There’s still plenty of work to be done, especially when competing with today’s live service headliners and fixing bugs. While it may not draw in the more single-player-focused RPG players, it’s at least more inviting and a better showcase of what an online Fallout title could offer.

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