Four months after launch, Bethesda Game Studios have finally unveiled a roadmap for Fallout 76. But with constant reports of faults, and rumours of plenty of unsold stock in the hands of retailers, is this just too little too late?
As it turns out, running games as a service isn’t easy. Whether it’s the likes of Activision or Electronic Arts, game companies who’ve tried this new, dangerous model of video game are finding themselves at the receiving end of harsh criticism from players and video game journalists alike. Destiny 2 hit a snag when it came to its first two DLCs, leading to the production of a costly extra expansion pack intended to remedy the situation. BioWare’s Anthem can barely achieve lift-off. Both have roadmaps, a common feature for live service games, intended to pinpoint content drops for the months ahead. More often than not, it’s also a form of tacit reassurance that developers have every intention to continue to support them.
A couple weeks ago, Fallout 76 joined the roadmap club; an interesting development for the players who’ve stuck with the game since then. You’d expect games to only get better since launch, but it’s no secret that it’s not been smooth sailing for the game’s developers at Bethesda Game Studios. Controversy has followed controversy, with criticism continuing to mount and PR missteps shaking the company’s reputation. Whether it’s a disastrous attempt at switching canvas bags with cheap nylon knockoffs and trying to cover their tracks by reimbursing annoyed fans with a measly £4 worth of in-game currency, or accidentally re-introducing bugs that had already been patched out, one thing is clear: it’s only gotten worse.
The task of fighting dupers, players who exploit the game to break into developer-only spaces or to duplicate rare items a thousand times over for sale on third-party websites, fell to other players, who attempted to become vigilantes. All this for the sole reason that apparently nobody at Bethesda could have predicted this (cheating in an online game, whoever could have imagined such a thing?), and now it’s beyond them to police their own game. It seems that every day, something new and something bad happens, whether it’s the guy who received a permanent ban for legitimately stockpiling ammo, or the people who clipped into one of the unopened Vaults and had to write up a plea to customer support to free themselves.
In the face of all these issues, whether it’s rampant cheating, or incessant bugs and terrible server performance, a roadmap of mildly interesting new content is a band-aid over a wound that needs 17 stitches. Fallout 76 is paradoxical, described as a social online game by developers who’ve steered well clear of adding or improving any of its social features. It’s certainly not easy to socialise in Fallout 76. You can’t collaborate with your friends to build anything from your C.A.M.P. Forget vast player settlements built cooperatively by groups of players. When building, you have to stay well clear of other people. Adding the ability to brew moonshine and run through the woods chasing cryptids is hardly a fix for core problems. Which begs the question: when are those core problems going to be addressed, if at all?
On the rare occasion that Bethesda hasn’t mis-stepped and gone backwards, it’s not gone forwards either. Rather, it’s going around in vague circles in the hope that adding complex content will magically fix a game that remains broken at its core. It’s going to be hard to take part in whatever fun stuff is being added if the servers don’t work and you crash every hour. Bethesda’s bold assertion that server stability has increased over 300% since launch sounds good until you realise that it’s meaningless without hard statistics to back it up. Are you getting fewer crash reports because you’ve fixed the game, or is it because the player base has shrunk? No one outside Bethesda has the numbers, but all those reports of stacks of unsold physical stock and bargain deals (free copy with a new controller anyone?) aren’t good signs. Adding complexity in the form of Survival Mode is yet another error. In a game with barebones PvP, what on Earth compels the introduction of a hardcore PvP mode with the ability to transfer characters, some of whom are undoubtedly armed with duped gear, over from vanilla? The best way to fix a game is to double down on fixes, not going into content auto-pilot and drifting into more problems to add to a steadily growing pile of mistakes.
Of course, the roadmap is traditional live service PR spin. If there’s a message to be taken away from the seemingly endless debacle surrounding Fallout 76, then it should be: don’t do a live service game if you have no idea how to make or manage one. With the crash landing of EA’s Anthem, it’s a message that not a lot of developers seem to be figuring out. I enjoyed Fallout 76, while I was still playing it. At the time, I hoped that Bethesda would step up and implements patches and fixes fast. I suspect it’s less that they won’t fix it, and more that they can’t fix it. That’s unfortunate, for genuinely enthusiastic and talented developers who want to make fresh content for a game that offers some fun against all odds, and for dedicated players who want to stay in for the long haul. It’s even unfortunate for people who don’t play. A lot of recent live service games feel rushed, as if the developers decided to release half of a game at launch and drip-feed the other half over the next year or so. That attitude feels cheap in the extreme, and games like Fallout 76, failures or not, only ever encourage publishers to try their hand.
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