How Bethesda Learned From The “Rough” Launch Of Fallout 76

Three years after launch, we speak to two lead developers behind Fallout 76 about how far the game has come.

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“I’m not going to shy away from the fact that our launch was rough,” Fallout 76 design director Mark Tucker tells me. “It was hard, and as someone who spent years working on it prior to that, it was hard to hear the feedback.”

Bethesda’s online spin on its post-apocalyptic RPG was met with a critical mauling upon its release. Press and consumers alike criticised its myriad bugs and seemingly endless controversies, causing Fallout 76 to grow into a meme of untold proportions. But while the internet had its fun tearing the game apart, the team behind the scenes was feeling it. After speaking to two of the lead developers, it’s clear they were aware of such issues long before they were unleashed upon the public, and were determined to fix them in the years and months to come. To their credit – they did.

“There’s a lot of lessons we learned, both good and bad, and looking back there’s definitely some things we would have done a little differently,” Tucker says. “That said, the beauty of working on a game like this is we can evolve and adapt over time, and that’s something that, as a developer, is really rewarding. Looking at Fallout 76 now compared to what it was three years ago – it’s a pretty different game, and something I’m exceptionally proud to be a part of.”

Tucker saw negative feedback as motivation, a drive to turn the ship around and craft Fallout 76 into something that does the name justice: “It wasn’t meeting fan expectations, but the cool thing is that we now had a chance to make it better,” he says. “We’ve spent several years doing that, and I like to think we’ve made a pretty significant improvement to the game, and have added a lot of really cool new features from players that have given us great feedback. It’s a process. We as developers have a lot of ideas, but we’re also listening to players so they can help guide us to where [Fallout 76] is going. If somebody had asked me three years ago what sort of game we’d have today, I likely would have given a very different answer.”

Fallout Worlds lead Bo Buchanan echoes this sentiment, delving into how the community and a cohesive vision for the post-apocalyptic universe has allowed 76 to keep moving forward in spite of the obstacles before it. “One of the special things about online games compared to single-player ones is that single-player games are just the games they are,” Buchanan explains. “They’re made and they’re put out there, but online games are made with the community, which is one of the things that surprised me when compared to other games I’ve worked on – this one of the most wholesome, helpful, and creative communities I’ve ever seen. Players wait outside the vault and hand items to people, like they’ll hand out care packages and help other people around them. Most other games would encourage PvP, but our players want to work together and help people. They want to be creative, they want to tell their own stories, they want to set up role-playing stores for when people come by, and those things help decide the direction the game needs to go in.”

Bethesda is keen to listen to everyone, not just those spouting abuse on social media or flooding forums with complaints. “I will say that we listen to everyone, even the people who don’t talk, which is important,” Buchanan says. “We spend a lot of time looking at metrics and data on what our players are actually doing in the game, and I think it’s important to tell our community that it’s not just the squeaky wheel that gets all the grease. Just because you’re not loud, or on a forum yelling about something or don’t have very vocal opinions, doesn’t mean we don’t have your interests at heart.”

Fallout 76 has come a long way, and as someone who played so much of it at launch, that journey has been fascinating to follow. Its latest major expansion, Fallout Worlds, is now available across consoles and PC as a free update.

Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/how-bethesda-learned-from-the-rough-launch-of-fallout-76-/