I'm going to start with a question. A rhetorical question. Why does anyone still play Fallout 76? The massively multiplayer online action game has been an epic failure from before it even launched, with glitched "beta" access, misleading advertising, poor choices in cross promotion, and data breaches. And that's only in the first few months of launch! Every time this game appears in the news, it's for something else that's gone horribly, horribly wrong. The launch of a premium subscription service and pay-to-win "convenience" mechanics just add insult to injury.
Imagine my surprise, then, to see Kotaku talking about it once more.
It seems Bethesda isn't done with making mistakes with this dumpster fire they try to pass off as a game. An article by Kotaku plainly illustrates why their road to hell was paved with their own good intentions. In it, writer Ethan Gach explains how trolls have taken to the public servers once more to grief other players. Since the PVP Survival mode has been disabled, and since in-game PVP mechanics require a player to shoot back after getting shot in order to engage in PVP, those looking to slake their thirst for violence have taken to a nuclear exploit in order to do so.
A literal nuke.
In Fallout 76, radiation damage counts as environmental rather than player-induced. So griefers and trolls can use nuclear mines to saturate an area with lethal radiation without ever actually directly targeting anyone. This neatly sidesteps Bethesda's PVP rules while still allowing them to kill other players. That, on top of everything else, just seems like yet another insult to the handful of people who support the game. And, of course, leads me back to my original question.
Why the heck is anyone still playing at this point?
I've made clear before my opinion of Fallout 76. It's soulless, dull, and completely impossible to enjoy. Bugs and glitches prevent any modicum of progress, a lack of NPCs prevent the game's lackluster story from having any resonance or gravitas, and Bethesda's repeated insistence that they would only ever add (ridiculously overpriced) cosmetics has been shattered multiple times. The game plays like something made by a bad Chinese knockoff company, not the same people who gave us the intense powerhouses that consist of previous Fallout games, and the Elder Scrolls series. It's stupid.
And I'm sorry if I insult anyone, but it's time to call it quits. If you're still playing Fallout 76, I don't know what you hope to get from it, but it's not going to happen. It will only disappoint you in the end.