Last week, Bethsoft stirred consternation over its plans for Fallout 76’s Survival mode ahead of its March beta. The mode will essentially add pure free-for-all PvP as a server option for the multiplayer title, but that’s not what has players concerned. No, it’s the statement from the studio that players will be able to bring their existing – and therefore, fully geared – characters into what otherwise seems designed to be a competitive mode with a leaderboard and the works.
MMO players will be nodding along right now, cognizant that this is a giant end-run around the idea of FFA, which is why so many MMOs won’t let you make these sorts of transfers: If you can just build your characer in relative safety on a normal server and then transfer to PvP, people will just do that, creating severe imbalance in the PvP mode, or at the very least, a major conflict between those who just want to pit their built-up toons against other build-up toons and those who want to build their toons in a truly FFA setting.
This is exactly what the game’s subreddit has been arguing for the last few days, anyway, and Bethsoft might be listening. Here’s one of the replies from Community Manager Valseek:
“Thank you for all of the feedback so far on the details we posted about Survival mode earlier today! We’ll make sure your thoughts about the mode here and in the future are shared with the dev team. The article mentions this already, but I wanted to restate that we’re still iterating and actively working on Survival mode, so things aren’t necessarily set in stone, and your continued feedback will be very important to us as we move toward beta, and eventually release. This is also just the beginning of the conversation. We’ll be looking to share more about the new mode with you in Inside the Vault, streams, and other means, and also talk more with you about what you’d like to see in Survival mode as we move forward. Thanks and please keep the feedback coming!”
