In a blog post today Bethesda announced that Fallout 76’s upcoming new player-vs.-player mode will go into beta in March and will be called Survival. Unlike in the regular game, the stakes in Survival will be higher, with no rules of engagement and the potential to lose more valuable items if you die.
According to Bethesda, Survival is a response to feedback from the game’s more competitive players requesting a hardcore PVP system. Survival will be a sort of free-for-all separate from the main game, which will be renamed Adventure mode. Both modes will be accessible from the main menu, and players’ characters can go in and out of either one.
Unlike in Adventure mode, PVP in Survival won’t be based on the current consent system, in which one player shoots at another and the other then decides whether to shoot back to initiate full combat. Instead, every player you encounter in Survival who isn’t in your party will be automatically attackable. A scaling system will be in place to make it easier for lower level players to fight back against higher level ones, but on the whole those with the best guns and the most ammunition will have a clear advantage.
While it might be fun to try out Survival with a fresh character (and Bethesda said it encourages players to do so when the time comes), the asymmetry between someone just starting out and a level 170 power armour brute sporting a hefty stockpile of mini nukes is clear.
One thing that’s supposed to woo players into this new mode is the prospect of better rewards. Players will get double the bottle caps — what goes for money in the world of Fallout – for successfully killing others in Survival. They’ll also potentially find better rewards when rummaging through the brown paper bags their victims leave behind.
Currently, players only drop some of their junk materials when they die in Fallout 76. In Survival, it will be possible to leave behind “aid or other items” as well. The phrasing is somewhat ambiguous, so it’s unclear yet whether that means you’ll only be dropping consumables like stimpacks and bobbleheads when you die or potentially weapons and armour as well.
There won’t be any revenge system in Survival either. Currently, killed players can respawn immediately at the scene of their murder. When someone dies at the hands of another Survival player, the victim will only be able to respawn back at their camp or Vault 76.
Finally, this new mode will also have a server-specific leaderboard system. Though Bethesda didn’t specify what will go into determining people’s rank, it did say players will be able to check it once they log on to the map to see where they sit on the food chain vis-a-vis the couple dozen other players currently logged onto that particular server with them.
It sounds like an interesting way to help make the world feel more cohesive, but it’s a far cry from the sorts of things like a social hub and multi-person campsites that have been hindering the game’s multiplayer experience since launch.
Bethesda made sure to point out in the post that none of these rules and mechanics for Survival are set in stone. Plenty could change between now and March, when the beta for Survival goes live in-game.
Comments
12 responses to “Bethesda Outlines How Fallout 76’s New PVP Mode Will Work”
*facepalm* Bloody hell… what are they on, over there? Between this and that godawful jacket…
Well, at least now that they’ve broken down the, “We don’t want you to see a server-selection,” barrier, they might get around to doing what every man and his dog has wanted from before the inception of this thing: PVE servers.
What do you mean about the server selection barrier? All I’ve seen is selecting between the 2 game modes, as far as i’m aware you still get dropped onto a random server.
Initially when we were asking for separate PVE/PVP servers, that was the point, though: you just log in and that’s it. No servers, no game modes, whatever.
That’s out the window, now, so they should get on to the PVE mode.
Dude, I mean, come on. The default is essentially PVE. You have to be insanely unlucky to be getting killed so often by random people that it’s this outputting for you.
Given all the glitching and duping that went on it is less PvP more PvG (God).
A hand full of players are going to dominate the game and until there are dedicated PvE servers I won’t be returning.
I wanted a game I could play with friends and build big bases together, or join up with randoms in both short and fun and big and epic PVE experiences.
What I got instead, was buyer’s remorse. Looks like the game I expected is still a year away.
Since they havent resolved the hacking, item duplication and other cheating issues… this will be an unmitigated disaster unless they and some actual game master tools with server side inventory monitoring.
Till they crack open a vault or found a ghoul run town or some other way to introduce NPCs to the game I’m holding off returning.
The game was always a chimera of a survival and an rpg. While you can put elements of each in each other, I now believe the two cannot exist simultaneously. What elicits entertainment from each is mutually exclusive.
As such I felt fallout needed to ‘pick a side’. I’m disappointed they picked survival first (though it’s understandably less effort).
Sounds like it could be fun (dupers/hackers/glitches aside)
I’ve only had one (even) PVP experience so far when a team of 2 attacked myself and my partner, we shot back and killed them. The other was accidentally responding to an attacker who was lvl 117 (I thought they were lvl 17 as the map view has problems displaying 3-digit player levels) needless to say 2-shots with and explosive rifle and I was dead…. so yeah I hope they work on balance.
Everyone really should have known what they were signing up for. I can’t believe people are still upset that it isn’t Fallout 4.2.
haha Yeah this will work well with people having weeks if not months now of exploiting and duping items
Hint: I’t Wont