Bethesda Game Studios reveals 2022 Roadmap for Fallout 76

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I really need to install this and give it an honest shake at some point.

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Thats a really pretty roadmap

The art itself looks great but seems a smidge content light - though this depends entirely on the scale of The Pitt - as it’s the biggest actual content coming but we have no idea how big that is actually gonna be. Still, the playerbase has been asking for new events and new world bosses and that seems to be what we’re getting!

Feels to me like Bethesda is slowly downsizing support for the game and that they’re preparing to move on from the project (there will certainly still updates to the game in 2023 and 2024 but I’m expecting things to become more and more light). The second half of 2021 was quite light as well in addition of things being delayed to 2022.

The whole of BGS is surely all hands on deck on Starfield and I guess the Fallout team is very small. The fact that Expeditions were supposed to come late 2020 (altough it was smaller in scale) then delayed to 2021 then it’s only coming in Fall 2022 (more than 1 year after the teaser trailer at E3 and 2.5 year after being announced) is telling. The Spring update was also supposed to come Winter 2021 (and it’s not some big content drop).

I wouldn’t mind lighter content for FO76 if it meant that BGS Austin was starting pre-production on a new Fallout game or something but this is far from being the case unfortunately.

Still very happy with FO76’s support overral (see you Anthem, Battlefield V and Avengers).

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All great points. I think once Starfield is out, It would be nice if BGS Austin get the chance to make a new Fallout.

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Glad they wont abandon the game. It has a lot of potential to grow a far bigger and healthy playerbase.

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Yeah it’s been pretty clear it’s a fairly small crew working on Fallout 76, covid increasing production time on anything they do certainly can’t have helped. We’re definitely nearer the end than the beginning for the game - but you’re right. If it’s coming to an end they’ve done pretty well by it at this point.

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I hope engine upgrade is on the roadmap. Would be neat if they migrated to Creation Engine 2

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According to Matty this road map is pretty embarrassing…not sure what the deal is…I was under the impression that this game was making strides with the Wastelanders expansion and so on but apparently it’s on “life support”

Haven’t played the game but was interested in giving it a go but this doesn’t exactly scream “a great time to jump in”

Life support is probably like “dead game” that people throw around at any and every game if it’s not the biggest game there is. Might not be huge but probably doing well enough, or more, for itself. Though, I myself wish it never existed in the first place and the effort should’ve been put on better use for the Fallout IP, but oh well.

The thing is that with all these GaaS games - unlike the regular games - they require relatively regular content (and enough of it) to retain the players. It is kinda fascinating how huge the teams for each and every GaaS games. Otherwise they won’t be able to pump out the content.

Shouldn’t excuse game quality…

“Other than this giant expansion coming out this year, and all the people still playing the game, this game is on life support!”

  • Incessant whiner whose takes on most things are atrocious
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As someone who plays regularly - it’s hard to say. The stuff that is on the road map is what people have been really asking for recently - more public events, more seasonals and a new world boss have all been in high demand and there’s nothing bad on there, it just doesn’t seem to represent a LOT of new content (though it does seem to be a decent amount of the content that people replay the most, which helps). I’d guess they were trying not to overpromise though and stick to only what they were sure they could deliver, last years roadmap looked solid but there was a few things that ended up slipping from it and that’s never popular with fans. Plus, Bethesda does a fair amount under the hood with ever major expansion - there’s a lot of work to add features that try to improve the core gameplay look and to add the quality life improvements people ask for. Every major update for the game includes a bunch of major improvements to the game that don’t make any roadmaps.

But the biggest thing right now is we have no idea what The Pitt exactly is as an expansion and we have no idea how big it is going to be. Wastelanders (and the following story expansions) were great but it was pretty much single player story content, it’s not entirely well suited in an environment that needs replayable content. The Pitt seems to be an effort to fix that by building a new system around telling stories using more replayable content, so as to act as a blueprint for future content. Exactly what that means we’re not sure yet. It’s entirely possible this is a big expansion and we’re seeing resources drained to prioritise it. Or that there’s a lot of work building the systems behind it that they can reuse later. Or it’s possible it’s not that big and the games support really is dwindling.

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How big is The Pitt? Is it a major expansion like Wastelanders?

That is what they insinuated when it was announced at E3. Its an entire new map from what I understand. It is the city of Pittsburg PA.

I’m not certain it actually is a whole new map, but I’d like to be wrong on that. This is sort of the difficulty on judging the scale of the expansion.

Well, the city of Pittsburg isn’t currently in the game. You cant have the city of Pittsburg in a game where it doesn’t currently exist, so its a new map. The scale of that map/location is certainly up for debate however.

Right, sure, but I think there’s a distinction between a new open world to explore or just levels to explore within the city of Pittsburg. My understanding is it’s more likely to be the latter.