Fallout 76 has one of the largest maps in any of the Bethesda games; it is even bigger than Skyrim. The humongous size of the map eventually became the game’s saving grace. Players have started to appreciate the game a lot more than back when it was launched.
Fallout 76 did not have a great launch, and a lot of fans of the franchise criticized it for not living up to people’s expectations. The game failed due to a lot of problems in the beginning, but over the years it has managed to stabilize through seasonal updates and additions that have strengthened its stronghold in the market.
Fallout 76’s map is the game’s selling point
Initially, during the launch of Fallout 76, there were a lot of problems with it, including a lot of game-breaking bugs, crashes, and performance issues. There were no NPCs, and the story had little depth.
Former Bethesda lead artist Nate Purkeypile, who also worked on the map of Fallout 76, remembers people bashing the gameplay but loving the map. He said:
Even though the game had a rocky launch, people liked the map. It was kind of nice to hear ‘hey, that game sucks, but the map’s pretty cool’. I did my job.
People felt alienated in such a large expanse of nothingness with very little interaction with another soul. Before becoming a savior, even the vastness of the map contributed to its bad reception, largely because there were very few things built around such a huge area. The game’s multiplayer nature did not help either.
Everything was against the game; there was not even a small group that appreciated the game back then. However, things are now not what they used to be, and Bethesda came around eventually; it introduced more characters and wiped a lot of the bugs, eventually stabilizing the game.
Things are not better for Fallout 76
The game now has a mostly positive rating on Steam, and a lot of people now enjoy playing it. This game has had a very dramatic trajectory, from being one of the most hated, to now being moderately loved.
Live-service games need to keep up to date with the changing trends in the industry and keep coming up with fresh and exciting updates to amend past mistakes while offering new things for the players to explore.
There is a lot to be learned from Fallout 76’s journey; it still has a humongous map, but instead of being hauntingly vacant, it now has a lot of things to interact with and a lot more NPCs than there were at launch. The feeling of immense alienation has been reduced significantly. Do you like playing Fallout 76? Let us know in the comments below.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
