Something to look forward to: Fallout 76 is almost here. Bethesda's experiment with a multiplayer Fallout will launch in two days on November 14. Early impressions have been somewhat lackluster, but we are dealing with beta versions of the game. So far there have been five beta sessions across all platforms.
According to an official statement, Bethesda has learned a lot from the Fallout 76 betas, the last one having finished on November 8. It has been in the process of fixing bugs and addressing feedback gathered from the public testing.
Many of the bugs were not quite game breaking. Some users reported that the hunger bar would not fill when they ate. That has been fixed according to the company. There also seemed to be random gunshots and loud noises that can be heard in particular areas of the game that developers plan to have fixed shortly after launch. Many other minor bugs were squashed as well.
As for player-requested features, Bethesda said that it could not address all requests but mentions a few that it plans to work on.
Some players felt that the stash size was too small. This will not be changed before launch, but the studio says that it is eventually going to increase how much users can carry.
"While the Stash size at 400 weight limit can get easier to deal with over time, we do plan on increasing it in the future," said Bethesda.
It would also like to add compatibility for ultra-wide displays. The game should receive support for 21:9 screens sometime after launch. However, they will not be adding a field-of-view slider.
"We haven't supported FOV sliders in our previous games as it is known to break a lot of animations and causes a lot of clipping to occur onscreen. You do have the option to zoom out in third-person on PC by holding View and moving the mouse wheel, but we won't be able to have it for first-person view."
Some PC players have requested a "push-to-talk" option for chatting, but Bethesda seems hesitant to add such a feature. It feels that it is more immersive to be able to hear other people talking around you.
"Our goal with voice chat being on by default is to highlight that the world is alive with real people, other players like you," it said.
Developers initially said that they would "look into" adding push-to-talk but later modified the statement to say that they would eventually add it in a future update. Not having push to talk would make it difficult for streamers to separate their communication with their audience from in-game chat, so this move makes a lot of sense.
Whether these additions and fixes will be enough to raise players opinions of the game remains to be seen. However, Bethesda has repeatedly stated that it plans for Fallout 76 to be an on-going project. Perhaps if they continue working with the community, the game can take the shape that players would like to see.