fallout 76

Fallout 76’s Nuclear Winter beta test period extended

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Fallout 76's Nuclear Winter beta test period extended 1

Nuclear Winter, Fallout 76’s battle royale mode has been extended beyond the previous beta testing time frame. Until when? Bethesda says, “indefinitely.” The new beta BR mode still is beta, and will continue to undergo beta testing until Bethesda is done collecting sample data for its new mode. Supposedly, the beta period would only run … Read more

Fallout 76’s battle royale mode explained, Nuclear Winter

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Fallout 76's Nuclear Winter mode explained.

Fallout 76’s battle royale mode is definitely a controversial topic. Regardless, the latest offering from Bethesda in the Fallout is nothing but a battle royale mode, and here’s how it works. The upcoming Westlanders expansion pack will be coming soon, but while that’s still on the way, we’ll have a piece of Nuclear Winter- the … Read more

Fallout 76’s Repair Kits add fuel to the fire; Bethesda’s pay-to-win microtransaction?

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Bethesda's new Repair Kits are bringing the hate.

Fallout 76’s new content updates have been pretty awesome so far, but some new microtransactions added to the game are boiling the water again. Fallout 76’s new content updates have been pretty awesome so far, but some new microtransactions added to the game are boiling the water again. With The new slew of free content … Read more

Fallout 76 “premium” leather jacket brings the memes

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Fallout 76 "premium" leather jacket brings the memes 10

Bethesda has annouced a “premium” Fallout 76 leather jacket available for purchase soon. Of course, given their pretty shaky history ever since the game rolled out two months ago, there’s been mostly criticism over everything they’ve done to it so far. One of the most notable things that happened was the cheap nylon bags they … Read more

Fallout 76’s “Atomic Shop”: Overpriced, false advertising, and possibly illegal?

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Fallout 76's "Atomic Shop": Overpriced, false advertising, and possibly illegal? 13

After a brief fallout from Bethesda’s lazy Fallout 76 launch, canvas bag scandal, and an alleged legal lawsuit for not honoring refunds on the PC version, they may be in hot water once again. Bethesda’s screw up this time around relates to Christmas-themed items in the Atomic Shop- the game’s microtransaction store that offers cosmetic … Read more

A giant 15” Fallout 76 Vault Boy Bobblehead worth looting

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A giant 15'' Fallout 76 Vault Boy Bobblehead worth looting 14

Gaming Heads announced today that they’re releasing a giant, 15-inch tall Fallout 76 Vault Boy bobblehead figure. They claim to have made the world’s first polystone resin Mega Bobblehead for the recently released survival game Fallout 76. Although the game got a shaky start, it’s receiving weekly updates to fix the mess that’s been plaguing players since … Read more

Fallout 76’s December 4 update will raise stash storage to 600 pounds; Full patch notes

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Fallout 76's December 4 update will raise stash storage to 600 pounds; Full patch notes 15

Fallout 76‘s rocky start will require more than just two giant patches to redeem itself.

Right now, the game is still poorly rated with a lot of mixed reviews and many 1-star reviews all over the web bashing Bethesda for releasing a rushed and empty shell of a Fallout game. Some are even threatening to sue them for not honoring returns.

Bethesda is under heat and trying to repair the game to make the whole thing a far more enjoyable experience. A new patch is scheduled for December 4 next week which doesn’t even compare to the previous patches in terms of size. From the patch notes, it’s an update built for fixing a ton of bugs and changing some elements that the community has complained about, such as increasing your storage capacity to 600 pounds.

The update is just 3GB for consoles and a mere 36MB for PC. This is the next closest schedule update to release for Fallout 76 and Bethesda has uploaded the patch notes (pasted below). There will be another update on December 11 which will include CAMP changes and some respeccing features, alongside the regular bug fixes.

At this point, the game is still in need of major repair for the plethora of bugs (some game-breaking ones) found all over the world. Afterward, they should focus on the quality of life and gameplay updates. Bethesda seems to know this already and thus is releasing bug patches first.

The patch will drop for PC and consoles on the same day.

Here are the patch notes for the December 4 Fallout 76 update:

GENERAL

  • Performance: PC framerates are once again uncapped. However, reaching very high framerates will no longer cause movement speed to increase. This was originally fixed in the November 19 patch.
  • Stability: The Fallout 76 game client and servers have received additional stability improvements.

C.A.M.P., CRAFTING, AND WORKSHOPS

  • Stash: Maximum stash storage has been increased by 50%, to 600 pounds. This is a conservative adjustment, and we plan to increase the storage cap further in the future once we’ve verified this change does not impact the stability of the game.

BALANCE

  • Enemies: XP rewards for killing high-level creatures have been reduced.
  • Bosses: Fixed an issue affecting instanced Boss loot. Players should now correctly receive 2-4 items per boss, depending on the creature’s difficulty and level.
  • Weapons: Automatic weapon damage has been increased by approximately 20% across the board.

PVP

  • Weapon Effects: Hitting another player with a Cryolator now applies a Chilled, Frosted, or Frozen status based on how many times they are hit. The duration of movement speed reductions applied by these effects have been significantly decreased.

BUG FIXES

STABILITY AND PERFORMANCE
  • Console: Fixed an issue that could cause the player to encounter an infinite loading screen when signing out of their console account while playing Fallout 76.
  • Xbox: Addressed a crash that could occur when sending multiple team invites immediately after exiting Vault 76 to a player who is not a friend.
GENERAL
  • Power Armor: Fixed an issue affecting Power Armor frames that could prevent the player from exiting their Power Armor.
  • Nuke Silos: Flipboards inside Nuke Silos no longer display portions of launch codes too soon after the codes were reset for the week.
C.A.M.P., WORKSHOPS, AND CRAFTING
  • C.A.M.P.: Moving C.A.M.P. locations will now correctly move standalone items built by the player into the build menu’s Stored tab.
  • Workshops: On PS4, wires will no longer appear to float in mid-air when attempting connect two or more objects.
  • Turrets: Will no longer become invisible if the player is not present at their C.A.M.P. when their turrets are destroyed.
PERKS
  • Perk Cards: Ranking up a Perk Card will no longer cause a duplicate card to appear.
SOCIAL
  • Teams: Fixed an issue that could prevent a team from being correctly formed in a game world after creating the team on the Main Menu when both players are using new characters.
  • Teams: Display durations for social notification have been reduced when many notifications are pending. This should help address an issue in which players did not see that they successfully joined a team.
SURVIVAL
  • Mutations: The Electrically Charged and Unstable Isotope Mutations no longer provide the player with bonus Health.
USER INTERFACE
  • AFK: Players will now be disconnected from a game world after 10 minutes of inactivity and will be prompted with a timer 1 minute before being kicked.
  • Atomic Shop: On PC, cursor position will no longer be disjointed from clicks in the Atomic Shop while using 16:10 resolutions.
  • Enemies: Red crosshairs and enemy health bars will no longer persist on-screen when an enemy is no longer in view.
  • Localization: Subtitles will now appear correctly, and English voiceover will play, for game clients in languages that do not have their own localized voiceover when listening to a Holotape or interacting with robots.
  • Pip-Boy: Fixed an issue that could cause duplicate data to appear in the Pip-Boy’s Stat and Effects interfaces.
  • Respawn: Dying while severely overencumbered will no longer remove all map markers when attempting to respawn. Instead, the player can now respawn at the nearest discovered Map Marker.
  • Quest Tracker: Quest objective notifications will no longer appear for inactive Quests immediately upon connecting to a world.

Fallout 76: Nukes for days, terrible lag, and “stuck” Power Armor. Oh my!

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Fallout 76: Nukes for days, terrible lag, and "stuck" Power Armor. Oh my! 16

Fallout 76’s launch was less-than-spectacular. And now with a share of bugs, terrible lag, and weird visual glitches, the game needs a lot of work from developer Bethesda.

One of the most exciting things about Fallout 76 were the nukes. Now, a few users have made the process of acquiring parts of a nuclear launch code and deciphering them to launch a nuke has become like a free-for-all, mundane activity.

Two programs have already been released which allows players to skip the decryption once you have all the pieces of the code. A Reddit user named joshuadaleadams created a program that lets you automatically cycle through possible codes. All you need are all the pieces of the code (all 8) and then type a question mark (?) in empty fields and it’ll automatically decipher the code. He states:

Another program called nukacrypt created by Waffle_Cop allows users to essentially do the same thing and makes the process much easier. Nukes just may be going off a lot more than we thought.

Besides nukes for everyone, another problem is that Xbox One players become stuck in the Power Armor and can’t escape it. Basically, once they take off the armor, their character’s body gets warped and stuck as if they were still wearing it. The UI is still viewable, but the character acts as if they have the armor donned. You can see that fans on Twitter are posting about it:

Other various glitches, bugs, and lag plague the game.

Some users also reported that the $200 version of the game that comes with the special Power Armor helmet had some serious quality problems. The helmet reeks of paint with a poor paint job. The voice changer and headlamp also work poorly.

We can expect Bethesda to release a patch very soon that addresses many of these problems. Nukes are bound to get nerfed in one way or another. I can smell it. Regardless, I’m still playing and don’t care. The game just came out.

Do you have any strange bugs that you’ve encountered? Let us know in the comments.

Bethesda posts warming “thank you” letter for the creation of Fallout 76

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Bethesda posts warming "thank you" letter for the creation of Fallout 76 17

With the explosive launch of Fallout 76 just two days away on November 14, Bethesda Games posted a very emotional letter (posted below) on their Twitter account with a Fallout-themed photo.

The letter isn’t really a promo material, but rather a “huge thanks” to everyone at Bethesda and ZeniMax and to all the fans who helped give community feedback during the Fallout 76 BETA. It’s basically an opening credit to the game thanking everyone who took part in the development of Fallout 76 and their proud heritage of creating epic games.

The final paragraph of the letter mentions that they’re going to build future content for Fallout 76, which is a given whether it’s in the form of DLC, expansion packs, season passes, or just plain free content for the game.

New “features” will also be added like Vaults, character respecs, gear, quests, and even a freakin’ faction-based PVP system, which is the one thing I’m most excited about after reading this letter. This may be what Pete Hines was referring to in regards to the game lasting “forever.”

With the BETA program completed, community fired up, and the game ready to launch in just under two days, this is truly an exciting time for both fans of the series and Bethesda themselves for such an accomplishment.

Fallout 76 will be the ninth entry into the Fallout series and the first ever online-only Fallout game for PS4, Xbox One, and PS4. The game’s Day One patch will be larger than the actual game, so a pre-load may be handy. You can pre-order it on Amazon here.

The letter reads as follows:

“It’s with great excitement that we’re finally launching Fallout 76. A Fallout game unlike anything we’ve done. Really, it’s a game unlike any we’ve ever played.

It’s been our privilege and passion to build games that transport you into new worlds and new experiences. With Fallout 76. we’ve woven together parts of our past Fallouts, the survival genre, and massive online games, to create something unique. A game where you share in the story, and the struggle to survive, with your friends, with strangers, and with us.

A huge thanks to everyone at Bethesda and ZeniMax who supported us in making this game. Creating a new style of game has taken the best from not just our own producers, programmers, artists, and designers – but great efforts from across the company. Special thanks to our friends at ZeniMax Online, id, and Arkane who helped us. And thanks to everyone in publishing, IT, Bethesda.Net, Customer Service, Admin, and our incredible partners in QA.

And a special thank you to all our fans who participated in the BETA, with your help we’ve made the game better each week. And this is just the beginning. We have an incredible list of updates we’ve begun work on, from CAMP building improvements, new quests and events, new Vaults opening, character respecing, a faction-based PvP system, and much more.

We hope your journey in Fallout 76 is as fun and as rewarding as it was for us to build it. We can’t wait to see where the country roads take you.

All our best,

Bethesda Game Studios”

 

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Bethesda VP Pete Hines: Fallout 76 will last “forever”

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Bethesda VP Pete Hines: Fallout 76 will last "forever" 18

Based on a recent interview with GameSpot, Pete Hines, the VP of Bethesda, talked about the future of Fallout 76. He seems very confident that Bethesda has a planned-out future for the first online Fallout game and one that the developer doesn’t seem to be “nuking’ anytime soon.

Fallout 76 is the first Fallout game that has multiplayer online and requires an active internet connection to play. The entire game is online-based. GameSpot asked a few questions about what would happen when they finally shut down the servers.

When asked about how long the game would be up, Hines replied “forever” citing World of Warcraft as an example:

“I don’t know how to give an answer other than that. It’s not like anybody makes a game and goes, ‘Well this is going to make it for 10 years if we’re lucky.’ Nobody thinks that way. How long has WoW been up now? Is that game planning to sunset in a year? I seriously doubt it.”

Hines said the support for Fallout 76 will be “never-ending” and that Bethesda may stop operating if people stop playing the game. But he’s pretty sure the game will never stop slowing down:

“We’re going to keep going as long as people keep playing it and it shows no sign of slowing down,”

“Once we get to private servers or whatever happens in the years following; I don’t know. Maybe there’s a point where it doesn’t matter. But … this is a massive franchise and a massive undertaking, and our commitment to it is it is never-ending, and that it continues on an ongoing basis.”

Fallout 76 will be launching on November 14, and fans are pumped. The game has two final beta sessions left– one starting today at 1PM ET and the last one on November 8. There have been some bugs already found in the game, but that’s what a BETA is for. There was a speed hack and a bug that wiped 50GB worth of data. Some popular streamers will be streaming the game on the final beta test day, including Ninja.

Fallout 76 will release on PC, Xbox One, and PS4. There won’t be a Switch release because it’s simply not possible. You can pre-order a copy right now at Amazon.

 

This post contains affiliate links where barrelrolled may receive a small commission upon sales. (This helps us feed our writers the good brand of ramen noodles rather than the generic, store brand.)

Bethesda announces final two Fallout 76 B.E.T.A. sessions

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Bethesda announces final two Fallout 76 B.E.T.A. sessions 19

Fallout 76 has finally reached the last two sessions for its BETA (Break-it Early Test Application) and they’ve finally announced the last two start and end times for eager fans.

On Tuesday, November 6, players will be able to join the second-to-last BETA test session for a mere two hours from 1-3PM ET. Fans have already expressed concern on Twitter saying that the short time frame makes it difficult to play since they’re likely trying to get as much playtime as possible during the BETA so they can have some powerful equipment in the actual game (gear is carried over to the full release).

The last session will be on November 8, where players can explore West Virginia one last time for a much more reasonable time limit of 6 hours.

Both sessions will apply to all platforms simultaneously.

Bethesda likely made the time frames short on purpose so it forces all players to log in around the same time. This will ensure server stability for the launch day when the entire globe begins bombarding their servers with requests. Rather than have a game offline on the first day, which is especially important for Fallout 76 since it’s a fully online game, Bethesda is being proactive about stress testing their hardware to guarantee a smooth launch.

With player progress carrying over to the retail version of the game, some players will already have an advantage from day one. However, players starting fresh don’t have ot opt-in to PVP until level 5, so this safeguards us newbies who didn’t have time (or access) to the specific BETA test times and dates.

Fallout 76 is less than two weeks from release and will go live on Nobemver 14th. You can pre-order the game on Amazon here. Are you ready for the next Fallout entry? I’ll be no-showing at work that day.

 

This post contains affiliate links where barrelrolled may receive a small commission upon sales. (This helps us feed our writers the good brand of ramen noodles rather than the generic, store brand.)

Fallout 76: State of West Virginia partners with Bethesda

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Fallout 76: State of West Virginia partners with Bethesda 20

Fallout 76 takes place in post-apocalyptic West Virginia. And the state of West Virginia is doing something to benefit from all this new exposure for their homeland.

Specifically, the state has partnered with Bethesda to promote the new Fallout 76 game by releasing new information on promo events and tours that they’ll have around the state. But the most awesome part is that they’ll have “Vault Boy sightings” as noted from the West Virginia Tourism Office.

Governor, Jim Justice, commented on this newfound partnership between the state and game company:

“It’s finally time the rest of the world sees what a gem West Virginia is. For years, I’ve been saying we have it all: beautiful scenery, the best people you could ask for and more. And now, we get to share a piece of that with people all over the world through the unique lens of this video game.”

News like this is always cool and interesting to see. A budding partnership up until the game’s release between the state and Bethesda will create increased resident happiness as they can appreciate the scenery and what their state has to offer. Prideful residents will be able to show off their homeland in Fallout 76. Pretty awesome to have your state featured in a video game. California next time? Anyone?

The game is coming out next month on the 14th for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The game is available for pre-order.

Fallout 76 stress test October 13-14; See if you’re one of the chosen!

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Fallout 76 stress test October 13-14; See if you're one of the chosen! 21

Bethesda announced today that select users on Xbox One will be able to play Fallout 76 starting this weekend.

A server stress test will be conducted in North American servers for Xbox One owners exclusively, which will allow a blessed number of players to explore, tame, and destroy things before the closed beta starts at the end of October.

To get access to this server test, the requirements are that:

  • You’re part of the Xbox Insider program
  • You’ve pre-ordered Fallout 76 on your Xbox One (no surprise)

One of the perks of pre-ordering is the ability to participate in beta tests and server tests like this.

For players who meet the two requirements, all they need to do is log-in to the Xbox Insider Portal this weekend to see if they’ve been selected by Bethesda to stress test the servers. Since it is a stress test, you can be certain that they’ll need a sufficient number of players actually playing the game and doing random things, so there’s a good chance you’ll get access.

Once you’re selected for entry, the official stress test begins October 13th- this Saturday.

As for the closed beta, Fallout 76 will begin on October 23 for those who’ve pre-ordered on Xbox One. Other platforms will be able to start their closed beta sessions on October 30.

Fallout 76 is the next entry into the long-running Fallout series and is the first time players will be able to explore a destroyed world online with other players. The game will have an MMORPG format with shelter building, crafting, and plenty of hunting. Players will be placed in a survival mode as they scavenge for resources and must form alliances- or play it lone wolf style.

And for those who aren’t interested in beta tests or server tests, Fallout 76 rolls out on November 14th for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Fallout 76 will be an online survival RPG

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Fallout 76 will be an online survival RPG 22

Fallout 76′s reveal took the web by storm and lots of questions were thrown by the fanbase.

Specifically, a report by Jason Schreier on Kotaku said that it’ll be “an online survival RPG that’s heavily inspired by games like DayZ and Rust.” He said that game is an experiment entry into the Fallout series.

The original plans for the game were a multiplayer version of Fallout 4 with the objective being to bring the entire universe online. It’ll contain a story and quests, but will take hints from the base-building feature in Fallout 4 and other games.

Based on Vault 76, the lore is that it’s a control vault and had no long-running experiments integrated into it and was meant to be unlocked 20 years after the war. The main objective of the vault is for players to make their mark on the world and rebuild things from the ground up after the destruction. This would also provide one of the earliest looks into the history of the Fallout universe.

The dev team includes Bethesda Game Studio’s main office in Maryland but also the Austin location, which used to be called Battlecry Studios and was acquired by Bethesda. They’ve only released multiplayer content for Doom so far.

No other details have been released yet, but the game should be revealed in full at E3 on June 10th. Some spare info reveals that it’ll be on all current-gen consoles and PC- except the Switch, which isn’t surprising.