The much anticipated Fallout 76 panel took place at QuakeCon overnight and it delivered a bunch of information about the nitty gritty details in terms of how the game would work.
Whilst the whole hour long panel is worth a watch, as well as the three minute perks video that shows Vault Boy literally mutating into a kangaroo, we’ve provided some of the more important information below (courtesy of _Robbie on Reddit for transcribing).
HOW SIMILAR IS FALLOUT 76 TO OTHER FALLOUT GAMES?
- “It’s very similar to the Fallout you know and love. The major difference is obviously, as you’ve heard, it’s online.” They really dug into the survival and crafting elements, workshop, C.A.M.P., etc. The presence of other players creates a lot of tension. They also mention that there’s a lot of systemic stuff that you engage with.
HOW DOES CREATING A CHARACTER WORK?
- The game begins with you creating your character, just like always. There are more options than ever, and you can take a photo of your character to serve as your ID badge. You can change FOV, zoom level, filters, poses, etc., and customize your badge to your liking. You can take these pictures at any point throughout the game, and the screenshots you take throughout the game will appear in loading screens and the like.
- At any point during the game, you can change your character’s appearance. You can even change your sex if you like.
WHAT ABOUT PERKS?
- When you level up, a menu appears that asks you which SPECIAL attribute you want to increase. When you pick one, you get a list of all the available perk cards that you can take under that attribute at your level. It seems like you don’t see all future perks under that attribute.
- BUT, in addition to core progression, there are also perk card packs. Perk card packs provide four random perk cards that are automatically given to you. You could have picked these cards yourself, but it’s a way of giving you more options that you might not have been willing to spend a point on when you leveled up. Every pack of cards comes with a joke and a stick of gum (the gum reduces hunger for a little while!)
- You get perk card packs every other level for the first 10 levels, then after that you get them every five. The purpose of this is to give you perks to experiment with. Maybe you didn’t realize how much you liked Luck perks until you got one in a pack and tried it out, then you decide you want to be more Luck focused.
HOW DOES PVP WORK?
- PVP also doesn’t kick in until level 5. It makes it so you have a firm grasp on the game before you can even engage or be engaged by another player.
- When you shoot another player, you do only a small amount of damage to them, not full damage, akin to an annoyance or an invitation to PVP. If the other player shoots you back and engages, the kid gloves come off and everybody is doing full damage.
- There’s a cap reward for killing another player; the higher their level, the bigger their reward. After you die, you can choose to “seek revenge”, which doubles the cap value that the enemy who killed you is worth.
- When you become a wanted murderer, a bounty is placed on you and is sent out to every player on the map. When a wanted murderer is killed, they pay the bounty out of their own cap supply
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DIE?
- When you die, you lose whatever junk you’re carrying. Junk isn’t worthless, but it’s not like losing valuable weapons or armor either. When you die, you can go back to where you died to reclaim your junk.
- You can store your junk in stashes between trips, which can’t be stolen. Stashes are found in your camp, and just generally around the game world.
MORE ON YOUR CAMP GETTING NUKED
- You don’t lose all your stuff when you get nuked. The structures are destroyed if your CAMP is in an area when it’s nuked, but the blueprint system lets you replace everything very easily. If you spend hours building a house, you save that whole structure as a blueprint, and can easily place it down again either to make repairs, or just to move your CAMP. It’s “very easy” to get back to where you were.
- The camp is also cool for PVP, if you lure an enemy back to your camp, where, maybe some turrets are waiting… you get the idea.
HOW DOES VATS WORK?
- VATS is in real time. At first, you can only target an entire enemy, not specific body parts, because it can be challenging to do that quickly. If you like how VATS works, you can get a perk that lets you select body parts like normal. VATS score is still determined by your perception. It’s also still good to find enemies you can’t see.
- Since your perception starts at 1, it’s not as useful out of the gate. You have to invest into it if you want your VATS to be super lethal, just like you’d invest into your other skills. It’s really good for players who aren’t as good at aiming but still want to be effective in combat.
