The 10 BIGGEST Improvements In Fallout 76 Since Launch

10 Ways Fallout 76 Has Improved Since Launch

Welcome to MojoPlays, and today, we’re taking a look at the 10 biggest differences between “Fallout 76” at launch and its state in 2024.

Technical Stability

It’s almost hard to believe that “Fallout 76” launched way, way back in 2018. And somehow, for some otherworldly reason, Bethesda continued supporting the game for the thousands of players who stuck with it. So, has the game become more technically sound than it was back then? Well, for the most part, yeah. “Fallout 76” is still prone to crashing every once in a while, but you aren’t seeing server-wide crashes constantly or parts of the world outright failing to load in. As for the framerate, the game is much more stable than it used to be. Framerates could be a bit more consistent on both PC and console, though the dips to forty or fifty frames per second don’t make the game as unplayable as it used to be.

Onboarding

One of “Fallout 76’s” greatest strengths right now is how it onboards new players. This is something many live service games struggle with as they keep pumping out more and more updates, expansions, and the like. But “Fallout 76” caters to new players in a few different ways. Upon exiting the vault, you will be asked if you want to build your character as you level up or if you would like to jump to Level 20 with one of several different SPECIAL card loadouts tacked onto your character. Even if you choose the former, you’ll get to choose from solid SPECIAL cards as you level up. So, don’t expect a big slog when you’re starting fresh.

Donation Boxes

In case you need a little bit of extra help in finding better equipment or additional supplies like food, Stimpaks, and crafting materials, there is a new feature that wasn’t here at launch. Scattered across the world are donation boxes. These boxes contain items left behind by other players who may not have had use for them or had an excess amount of particular items. Before this, players would just drop items, and they would be stored in a generic paper brown bag. With this method, it’s now easier for folks to lessen their load while helping others in more concentrated spots without hoping some rando comes along.

Enemy Variety

Back in the first year or so after launch, “Fallout 76” was not too exciting when it came to enemy variety. You mostly fought ghouls, scorched, scorched ghouls, scorched feral ghouls, and…well, yeah, that was pretty much it. There were some enemies like mutants and rogue robots here and there. Mole miners were in a few areas as well, and Deathclaws came around in high-level areas. Thankfully, combat is spiced up a bit with even more enemies both new and older from previous “Fallout” games. But the biggest change is in the legendary weapons. Not only do they spawn in more reasonable areas, they also drop items equal to their level. In the game’s first year, it was common to find enemies ten levels above you, barely make it out of fights alive, and only get Mirelurk meat or a couple of crafting materials.

Fast Travel

One of the most annoying aspects of “Fallout 76” at launch was how it handled fast travel. This may sound hard to believe, but fast travel was made to be just as annoying as manually getting from one area of the world to the other. In order to access fast travel, you would have to save up on caps as the distance between you and where you wanted to go would determine how expensive fast travel would be. If you strayed too far from your camp and were on the verge of death but could not afford fast travel, this system would straight up kill some people’s desire to keep playing. Thankfully, that is no longer a problem. “Fallout 76” follows the traditional fast travel system; so long as you are not in combat or are not over encumbered, you can fast travel at no cost.

Expeditions

Another painful part of “Fallout 76” in its original state was its grind for materials and currency. In order to conduct an expedition, you needed to acquire enough ultracells to power up a Vertibird. Not only that, but all players needed to be present at the Vertibird in order to travel together. But after the Once in a Blue Moon update in 2023, that is no longer the case. Expeditions no longer require ultracells to initiate, and your friends can join you mid-expedition in case you need some help or someone is running late to game night.

Combat Balance

As we mentioned earlier, combat used to be a bit of a problem with legendary enemies. You could be fighting through a horde of ghouls at level twelve or thirteen only to be ambushed by another ghoul several levels above you. Well, in addition to adjustments in enemy variety and level scaling, weapons and weapon mods have also seen some tweaks in their stats while stats revolving around science affect energy weapons…as they should have from the beginning. In other words, the combat of “Fallout 76” now feels much more in-line with the previous games from Bethesda.

Public Events

In order to keep “Fallout 76” exciting for players, Bethesda incorporated the concept of public events. Every twenty minutes, one of these events would spawn in the server. Unfortunately, at launch, the pool of rotating public events was very, very small. We could only spend so long fighting hordes while defending a factory before it starts getting super boring. But now, you can take part in a Moonshine Jamboree, cryptid hunting, and even play some Nuka-World carnival games! The world feels much more alive now, and the seasonal events really add to the normal rotation when those roll around.

Massive Expansions

Since 2018, “Fallout 76” has introduced a variety of game modes to try and give players other things to do besides go exploring the mountains and mines. Nuclear Winter was fun…for ten minutes. But since then, we’ve seen a few big expansions get added in. Steel Dawn and Steel Reign introduced a whole new questline involving the Brotherhood of Steel. In 2022, we saw the return of The Pitt, which was originally an expansion for “Fallout 3”. Then, in late 2023, we got the first part of an expedition that took us to Atlantic City, New Jersey; the second half launched in late March 2024. But the biggest expansion in “Fallout 76”?

Proper NPCs!

The Wastelanders expansion filled in the biggest void “Fallout 76” left open: the NPCs. Sure, there were some NPCs at launch, but those were primarily stores and facilities run by some Mr. Handys. Other than that, there weren’t really any characters to move the story along outside of holotapes. But over the years, questlines have been heavily tweaked to incorporate more and more NPCs to properly tell the game’s story. Basically, we finally have the “Fallout” experience we should have gotten in 2018, loaded up with unique stories, characters, and of course, moral dilemmas.

Have you been heading back down the country roads of “Fallout 76”? We’ve definitely been hearing her voice in the morning hour again, but let us know down in the comments and be sure to subscribe to MojoPlays for more great videos everyday!