“Why aren’t they killing each other?” asked Bethesda, confused as to why Fallout 76 players weren’t into PvP

You take a bunch of Wasteland survivors. You ask them to collect resources, weapons, plenty of pointless junk and then you ask them to purify the remains of a nuclear holocaust. One would imagine that at some point that posse of irradiated vault dwellers would grow at least a little irritated with one another and try to kill off the guy who just keeps stealing everyone’s bottle caps. While that certainly did happen in Fallout 76, it didn’t occur as much as Bethesda thought it would. So says Pete Hines, one of the higher-ups at Bethesda, who confirmed the lack of interest in the game’s PvP elements pushed them to develop the Wastelanders expansion:

Well, I mean at the end of the day, our intention was always, we’re going to put this out there, see what folks think, and then cater the stuff that we do later to their reaction. So, for example, I think we were a little surprised how few people wanted to take part in PvP and how many more they were interested in PvE together. As opposed to, ‘I want to test my mettle against you and let’s get into a duel.’ There’s some folks who do, don’t get me wrong, but I think it’s a smaller percentage of our player base than we thought.

After learning that most players wanted to treat Fallout 76 as a co-operative exploration game, Bethesda figured that those were the elements that ought to be doubled down on in the upcoming expansion. Funny that, it’s almost like players wanted a Fallout game in the middle of their open-world “survival” experience. Here’s hoping the Wastelanders update, which will add a load of new features to better build on the game’s exploration and co-op elements, ensures players stay friendly with one another.

Last Updated: March 2, 2020