We got our first bit of information on how pvp will work in Fallout 76 out of Quakecon this past weekend, and I’m loving it.
If you haven’t watched the interview I’ll break down the basics.
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If someone shoots you, it does a tiny amount of damage. This is apparently sort of a love tap to indicate they want a fight (Todd Howard likened it to “slapping someone in a bar,” and I spent the next hour trying to decide if he just goes around slapping people in bars, or if he literally has no idea what a bar fight is like…)
Anyway, at this point you can either A) Engage by firing back, at which point you’re in full on, full damage PVP mode and to the victor go the spoils or B) you can ignore them/run away.
If you don’t engage in PVP, and they keep shooting and kill you anyway, they are now a wanted murderer. They get no loot or experience from the kill, they become blind to every other player on the map, and everyone on the server can now see exactly where they are at all times. Plus, there’s a bounty on their head that gets paid out of their pocket.
In Todd Howard’s own words, they’re “turning the assholes into interesting content.”
I love this. First of all, I love the idea of playing in a Fallout world with the danger of maybe happening upon a player and not knowing if they’re friend or foe. I don’t know that this approach will necessarily sway the people who have already decided they’re dead set against multiplayer in Fallout, but I think this is a great approach to manage some of the chaos it could bring.
It will not completely prevent players from killing other players. Let’s face it, some people are going to want to do it no matter the personal cost. And that’s fine to a degree. As far as I’m concerned, venturing out into the wastes of Fallout should be dangerous, and whether it’s dying to a surprise Deathclaw attack or to another human doesn’t make a difference to me.
I do think this system will make it a more measured choice to continue attacking someone that doesn’t want to participate, as opposed to just unbridled griefing.
Other small features they mentioned like Pacifist mode so your bullets won’t initiate PVP (someone can’t jump in front of you fighting a creature to trick you into engaging) and a Revenge contract (double the caps if you lost a fight with someone and want to try and hunt them down for a rematch) give us a more well-rounded look at what the experience might look like.
The idea of mutations as a result of radiation, and the new card-based perks really have me looking forward to this iteration of Fallout.
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I like that perks are shareable.
The information on how pop will be handled has created some interest for me. My biggest problems with online multiplayer games is that if your not constantly playing you fall behind and are quite often outmatched by other players. Even games that are coop online can leave you feeling useless if your new to a level that your teammates have plenty of practice on. My other problem is feeling like I need other people to get through parts of the game. I like to be able to play through an area alone if I so choose. The way pvp is… Read more »
I agree 100%, I only haber 2-3 hours a week to play, so any kind of multiplayer is useless for me since I’ll always behind everybody. I just hope that they have a solo mode like Elite Dangerous for example.
From what they have previously stated, there will be no “alone” mode at launch. There will be a “solo” mode, wherein you don’t *need* to play with friends, but that *doesn’t* mean you will be alone, and the game will be “harder” in some way(s). There will still be other players out in the world around you. If I had decent internet, I would agree with you; some solo mode wherein I can play alone, and just enjoy myself would be all I want. As-is, with my crap satellite internet, I probably won’t be playing at all. I get what… Read more »
As a regular EVE online player i don’t get this. Make PVP the standard and go from there. If you don’t want to pvp, then the game is not for you.
“The developers should fundamentally change the game philosophy and design to cater to my personal preferences. If people don’t like it, they can play something else.” – You
If you don’t like the basic philosophy and design goals of the game, the game isn’t for you.
Don’t like how the game works eh? Maybe this game isn’t for you.
Alternatively, dont include PvP at all and go from there.
OR just do this because its a somewhat middle ground.
Or dont play the game if its not your thing.
Or… Maybe if you do want to PVP, then the game is not for you. ????????
The problem lies in the first sentence. “As a regular EVE online Player”.
Sorry that us EVE players remind you you actually need a brain to play it. 😛
So… they are doing it like Ultima Online 20 Years ago, only slightly less good…
Congrats.
inb4 inflicting critical-but-not-dead damage on a player just as they’re set upon by a pack of Deathclaws…
So if a “wanted murder” keeps killing people his bounty rill rise? Man, I could see some players wanting just that! Like being the guy who killed 5 players who didn’t wanted to fight and having a bounty of several thousand caps on their head. Or there being a list of wanted murderers and you are way up there. Ofc this also means sooner or later other players will become bounty hunters but who knows maybe some wanted murderers manage to find each other to become a band of criminals all ready to hunt newbies till they are hunted down.
If they pull the “player is blind/opponents have a map pointer” off though it wont be fun for long, especially with the no loot and the bounty comes out of your pocket restrictions……
A side effect of changing the economy to account for PvP rewards coming out of the loser’s pockets is that it means 1. bounties and 2. Almost but not quite EVERYONE will have pacifist on unless they are doing some sort of challenge, are being reckless, or bounty hunting.
I have played several games where people killed others with nothing to gain (except maybe blocking progress of others) but a bounty on their head and lost money if they got killed. Guess what these were mostly whales who enjoyed ruining the game for new and low level players. And this was why this game was shut down recently because there was barely anyone left.
If they don’t manage this very carefully I see no future for this game … not that I see a bright future for this game anyway …
Yeah, there was a specific anecdote in the panel where one of the panel members was about to log for the night, but someone on the server got wanted status. The panel member had recently built himself a fancy sniper rifle and wanted to try it out. So he fast traveled to the general vicinity of the wanted player, stealthed into some well hidden position, and killed the wanted player with a single shot at range. Being wanted will not be a happy walk in the park. Some people will probably enjoy the tension, but it sounds like it will… Read more »
Somewhere: The only thing you lose when you die in regular PVP is whatever Junk (crafting resources) you are carrying. You do not lose gear or money. You lose caps if you’re a Wanted Murderer (ie, you killed someone who did not fight back). Just wanted to clarify the difference between that and “PVP” rewards. The system will not deter some people, obviously. They’ll want to be assholes no matter the cost. But this does turn having an asshole on your server into a gameplay element. And I think the downsides will give more casual assholes pause before they decide… Read more »
If the payout comes from the jerk, what if the jerk has no caps or other items if value? Do you get their armor and gun or does the game just cough up the goods.
I dont see the point of a hybrid approach. PVP zones or Servers would make more sense.
Well they did confirm private servers, so its possible there will be settings you can change if you want FFA pvp.
Agree completely. Sounds like a great system. Only thing to me is that I hope they implement it in a way where it will be somewhat painful to get a bounty on your head regardless of the phase of the game. Off the bat, I could see this being painful in the early to mid game. But if it’s just a set 1000 caps or something, later in the game when someone is level 100, 1000 caps might be peanuts. Which will make it a non-issue to grief for them. So I’m hoping the bounty amount will always be a… Read more »
For this, I’d go as high as 60% of… whatever currency is most tied to advancement. Or a flat fee if that is higher… without creating more currency out of the air, or you *will* have a team farming one designated murderer repeatedly in, like… a very unfair death arena.
Which… would actually fit the raiders style, come to think of it. Fek, even the ways this could break could be really damn cool.
I’m guessing the backstory to Fallout was at one point “Two powerful world leaders walk into a bar, sit down, one of them slaps the other”?
I already can see an exploit for this….
Intentionally run into your chosen target’s fire while they are attacking a MoB, and then “Return” fire to activate PvP…
Yeah… Bethesday can see it too. Which is why they’re adding Pacifist mode. I mentioned it above XD
Probably learned it from The Division’s dark zone. Since that’s exactly what people were doing.
And I’m glad they took that lesson from it.
Oops… Skimmmed it a little too fast…
aaand you beat me to the self-edit.
Heh..
Sooo… instead of outright killing other players, they can just shoot them to where they have barely any health, in a dangerous monster-filled wasteland? And follow them around and do it again and again?
Doesn’t necessarily sound better. Different, not better.
Also- does this mean that if America hadn’t also fired nukes, there would have been no need for vaults, as the damage also would be miniscule? Like, instead of destruction across the nation, only Cleveland would fall?
Sounds like they’d have to burn through a LOT of ammo to manage it on the unwilling. Not saying that people wouldn’t, but they’d have to spend a lot of resources on being a dick. If it costs them notably more than they are able to grief others out of, it’d be a self-correcting problem.
It’ll become important how deaths are attributed (i.e. super-majority damage dealer should be considered killer, not simply whatever delivers killing blow).
It actually sounds pretty cool, especially the Revenge contract part, which would ostensibly give the griefer a chance to get his stuff back, or at least come out better than they normally would. Still, I can see teams forming to try and take advantage of this after a little while, so it should be interesting to see how it all plays out.
ok as one of the masses not liking the thought of multiplayer only this does calm me alot. its kinda like how pvp was handled for me in EVE and i love that game. plus if it takes forever to kill you, because you heal through it or simply have ALOT of health, that gives you time to call in friends and really mess his day up.
This will be interesting to see how it plays out. The thing is that… most people wont give two shits about whether or not the players will drop loot and the hunted status thing will just result in them finding a corner to camp in until they feel like leaving or letting themselves die.
Its what happened with the Division anyway. The beta was interesting with lots of players grouping up on the rogue agents, but when the game released and people worked out absolutely broken builds the game just became shoot on sight.
That being said, the fact the servers seem to work much like things like GTAOnline and such means that there’s a good chance if some griefer comes along people will just hop lobbies anyway. So, at worst the killer player gets a bunch of nothing to do with players never coming after them, and at best they get their asses handed to them.
So… what Lineage II did a decade earlier. EDGY!
Yeah, it’s similar. But nobody claimed that penalizing griefers was revolutionary, I said it was a good approach to the situation.
You can probably put that all-caps “EDGY!” back in your pocket for another day.
The pacifist option seals the deal for me. The whole griefing thing is the main reason I was going to refuse to play, but if I can allow others to only be able to murder me and get screwed by toggling an option, I’ll happily do it.
One thing I’m still curious about:
When you attack a Wanted Murderer, will you do 100% damage in the first attack or does the murderer also have to “consent”?
They didn’t address that specifically, but it sounded like he’s completely vulnerable at all times.
I like the *option* of multiplayer and free-for-all PvP.
But I flat out will not by buying this game so long as multiplayer and PvP are mandatory, regardless of how many deterrents they put in place against griefing. If the internet has taught us anything, it’s that there’s a significant portion of people that revel in and will to go any length to cause frustration and grief in others.
I can see this leading some people to use tactics similar to those used in WoW pve servers sometimes, where someone flags themselves for pvp and then stands on top of a heavily used npc in a cross-faction area. Isle of Quel’Danas for example, when Burning Crusade came out. It’s a move mostly used by complete pvp scrubs, those who aren’t good enough for pvp servers and somehow feel better about themselves when they pwn pve players who accidentally got flagged and aren’t experienced in, or geared for, pvp combat. I’m sure someone will figure out a way to do… Read more »
I like it! If I was going to suggest something though, it would be to make the person a murderer/attempted murderer if they cause more than their victim’s full health bar in damage. That will do two things: prevent the griefer from constantly damaging a victim even after they heal, and once the threshold is reached, the murderer is blind to his victim, who can now collect the bounty.
I mean, that’s true, isn’t it? Is it called a war if it’s one side continually poking another while the other doesn’t respond?
I’m a big fan of this approach. I was pretty interested before, but how they were going to manage griefing was going to make or break my purchase. Now all they have to do is make sure the servers run (if they do for the majority of the BETA, that’s good enough), and my sale is final.
Didnt they say you’d only get to play with about a dozen or two people at a time? at that point why not just make a full pvp lobbies and non pvp lobbies, where maybe theres greater reward for playing in pvp, such as double resource drops.
I’m going to disagree. I think this is a poor decision for a few reasons, some to do with lore and some to do with gameplay. Lorewise, these are supposed to be the first people leaving the Vaults. There is no civilization here – there’s no organization to run the bounties. As well, while the Fallout world *does* have consequences for killing people, at the same time you can kill anyone (that doesn’t have the immersion-breaking essential flag), which this severely undermines. Gameplay-wise, it removes a very important tool in a defensive toolbox. What are you supposed to do if… Read more »
Instead of running away, there should be an option that starts a campfire that your character sits beside while playing a guitar and singing Kumbaya. Of course this might cause even more deaths.
I didn’t get the reference, who is this guy with the cigar?
I think it’s Ron Perlman. Didn’t get the reference either, but I recognized his succinct features 😀
Maybe he’s voice acting a character in the Fallout franchise?
I did expect something along the lines of “War….war never changes” (although I’d be more on Old Snake’s side with saying: “War….has changed” :P)
Ty! I was wondering who was that guy, but Ron Perlman fits it.
It’s Ron Perlman, and he was the narrator for Fallout 1, 2, 3 & New Vegas.
All 4 of these titles start with the line “War. War never changes.”
Fallout 4 has the same line but a different narrator
Not sure where to put this, please move to appropriate as able but holy cow EAquake!
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/a-top-ea-exec-patrick-soderlund-is-leaving-the-com/1100-6461154/?utm_source=gamefaqs&utm_medium=partner&utm_content=news_module&utm_campaign=homepage
and one weird term that came up in the article:
https://www.google.com/search?q=UX+approach&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b
As soon as they said “Cards” and made mentions of GTAV: Online I lost interest immediately.
I want to give them too little credit as a developer, but I can only imagine they sold investors on this game by suggesting players will continue spending money in it.
They already broke my heart when they said they’d trend away from working with other developers (Like with New Vegas, objectively their best Fallout entry since reviving the franchise)
What do cards have to do with anything?
I am….cautiously pessemistic about the system that will be used to get better perk cards, since at the moment they appear to be given out randomly.
Games that involve deck building of most sorts tend to be notorious about encouraging player spending…how are your chances going to be getting good cards in the card packs each level?
The system is: you pick one when you level, and you get a pack of random cards every X number of levels. That’s it.
They’ve already stated that if the game has microtransactions, they will be cosmetics for your character/base only. You can’t buy card packs.
Mictrtransation.exe has crash BF2 Beta. It will rear its ugly head more than once. It will hold companies ransom until the company pays up in time rethinking the system and implementing it. (And some money)
*microtransaction*
I dont like the fact that you get a waypoint on your head, i think that makes taking care of the players cheap. What would be more interesting is if you had to go to the murder scene, and track the wanted player. That would really sell it for me.
…and that’s where the term civil war comes from.
BWWWAAAAAAAA
[MeMeS.exe has crashed]
Okay, I just have to say how gorgeous Tim’s artwork has gotten lately. Look at that smoke coming off the cigar. That looks absolutely realistic.
I imagined a comic like this where people are damaging themselves with Mininukes, in a clockwise cycle, then they turn and high-five each other and explode from the high5 starting pvp combat.