With the addition of NPCs to Fallout 76, things in the multiplayer game have certainly shifted for the better, but it also doesn’t seem we can have an update to this game without some sort of weird bug, and sure enough there is one: It turns out that NPCs in the game can straight-up loot your corpse.
According to the Reddit post and since confirmed in video footage, NPCs that are part of the new events Riding Shotgun and Radiation Rumble will loot player corpses if they die during an event, often snatching up players’ hard-earned, unique weapons and all of their ammo.
It sounds like there are a number of stars that have to line up for this to happen, such as players having much better gear than an NPC yet still dying while using said gear (remember kids: kit doesn’t always replace skill), but it’s happened enough to raise community concerns. While this sort of behavior isn’t entirely unique in MMOs — NPCs in Ultima Online can do this, for example — it appears that this isn’t meant to occur in Fallout 76 and the devs are looking in to it.
I know this is just a bug, but this is actually what every good MMORPG should have – even if there are no other players who can attack you, the NPC should be able to loot you and steal your stuff, which can be looted back by you if you will find and kill that NPC (the developers can add some fun AI code where NPC tries to hide after looting you by running far away from the area the NPC is preprogrammed to patrol and wait for an hour or so before returning), or by another player if that player will kill NPC before you. Or even allow NPC to run to nearest vendor to sell the stuff, and if NPC will succeed – you will never get your gear back and will only get some in-game currency by killing the NPC who sold your gear to vendor. This adds extra sense of danger and adds more stuff to do for crafters if you cannot get your stuff back.
Of course, there will be immediately a bunch of complaints about “this is griefing, the developers who programmed those NPCs are antisocial basement-dwelling sociopaths, allow us to mark ourselves for PvE so NPCs would not be able to attack us if we do not want to!!!!111oneoneone” ;-)
Nah. It’s an feature that should remain optional at best for the more daring individuals, but i’m not interested in having a chance to lose all the ( time-consuming ) progress i made in the game for any reason.
That ain’t the only bug. After supposedly fixing display cases and vending machines, I can no longer add anything to my fridge or display cases or vending machines without receiving an error stating that my CAMP’s budget has been exceeded (even when it hasn’t!).
Not quite as bad as having my stuff looted by a stinking NPC, but still frustrating! lol
Sounds like a good way to make a PvE version of Nuclear Winter, or fill Nuclear Winter’s numbers with NPC bots to help pad it out.
Either way at least it’s not applicable to all NPCs, and just those during two events. So far the weirdest thing I’ve seen is repeatedly logging in to find lootable human corpses in front of my CAMP as if a random encounter tried to spawn and then everyone died while I was loading in.
Also Reddit AMA with Bethesda tomorrow on the Fo76 subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/g66s40/in_case_you_missed_it_bethesda_ama_tomorrow_april/
Hope the devs find a way to keep this in some form. Like you get a revenge mechanic against the NPC that killed/looted you, or eventually the stuff reappears in your stash. It could be a cool addition to gameplay as long as it’s not taken to a painful extreme
I agree, it seems like it could add some fun to the game, as long as they can keep it somewhat balanced.
I’m sure it’ll be a “feature”. Hell, it should be. They just need to learn how to replicate it.
TBH it would be a great way to add bots to Nuclear Winter to pad it out. Or do a PvE Nuclear Winter/hardcore survival mode (and not the joke of a Survival mode they attempted to do and then shuttered).
I think it should be a optional feature tho. I’m all for some lack of QoL, but optional, always.
Yeah most definitely. If they make this “feature” return I’d rather see it for a reincarnated Survival mode (that doesn’t flipping put a bounty on you that marks you on the map after surviving 5 or however many minutes….) or like a PvE take/population padding on Nuclear Winter.
Definitely a server OPTION.
What Bethesda isnt telling us is that they arent really NPCs… they are fully staffed employees pretending to be NPCs, because they couldnt add them without there being too many bugs.
Devs be taking your stuff.
NPCs are like, you wanted us here! We were enjoying a nice retirement, but noooo. So we’re taking your loot as payment!
Lol.
I like it. Keep it in. It makes those wastelanders realistic.