Fallout 76‘s launch last year was fascinating for all sorts of reasons. And while the developers received all sorts of feedback, one fan expressed their feelings about bobby pins in a rather creative way.
At the game’s launch, one of Fallout 76‘s biggest problems was weight. Characters could only carry so much, and with limited stash sizes, the weight of every little item became a massive deal. One hairpin that weighs 0.1 pounds might not seem a big deal by itself, but when you’re carrying 100 or 200 lockpicks, then suddenly your lockpicks are more of an encumbrance than your armour.
Bobby pins are something that Fallout 76 has patched and re-patched since launch. And around the time of the game’s launch, when the player base was at its largest and crankiest, one fan had a very passive-aggressive way of making their point.
“Some people send letters; some of those are very creative,” executive director Todd Howard said at the Bethesda Game Days Fallout 76 panel. “I got a box of bobby pins the other week that said, ‘Weigh these.’ Whoever sent that, that was the most creative letter I got,” Howard explained.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/01/fallout-76s-bobby-pins-are-no-longer-60x-heavier-than-actual-bobby-pins/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/udv8chmrfkhrzsfadd5b.jpg” title=”Fallout 76’s Bobby Pins Are No Longer 60x Heavier Than Actual Bobby Pins” excerpt=”Amidst all of Fallout 76’s launch woes, one of the funnier stories was how its lock-picking bobby pins – normally a weightless commodity in Bethesda games – were now hilariously heavy, to the point where just 60 of them would weight as much as a mini-nuke.”]
Howard and the other developers noted that during the live Q&A that Fallout 76 was designed as a platform – a game as a service not too distant from The Elder Scrolls Online. The game is starting to reflect that principle a little better: the more savage online gameplay is starting to exist solely within Survival mode, while people enjoying the game casually, wandering Appalachia alone, can do so in the original Adventure mode.
To view the panel talk in full, watch the video below from about 28 minutes.
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