Fallout 76 Custom Worlds: I Don’t Get It

Quakecon is happening as I write this. I wasn’t really following it because my FPS days are long behind me, but then a Tweet about Fallout 76 slid down my timeline. They’re adding something called Fallout Worlds. I do play Fallout 76 now and again so I had to go watch the YouTube presentation:

So the brief recap in case you don’t have time to watch the video: they’re adding custom world settings. Examples included build anywhere and unlimited ammo. Basically tweaks to the rules of the game so you can change up your experience. That sounds pretty neat…until you get to the huge caveat.

When you play on a Custom World, the game makes a copy of your character for that world. This is now a completely separate character and any progress you make does not translate back to the ‘standard’ worlds. Basically it is a one way cloning trip.

This feels to me like a Public Test Server where you can tweak the ruleset. I can see it being a fun diversion to go into a custom world with unlimited ammo and extra enemies and just blow shit up for a while, but long term I just don’t see the point.

Credit for this and header image: Bethesda.net

There are two ways to play on Custom Worlds. Every month Bethesda themselves will spin up a Custom World with some ruleset they find interesting. Anyone can play on these, and after a month they get shut down (and your character gets deleted) and a new Custom World with a new ruleset gets created. The one month duration is a starting point and they say they’ll adjust that to be shorter or longer based on player feedback.

If you’re willing to pay, “Fallout 1st” members (Fallout 1st is the optional subscription service for the game) can create their own Custom Private Worlds. Same rules apply: you get a copy of your character that, once created, stays on that world. I guess the difference here is you can leave that world up indefinitely and only play on it, which makes the system a little more appealing.

I’m still not sure the cost of playing on a custom private world is worth it. Normally you can play on your Fallout 1st Private World today, then decide to jump into the public server with the same character tomorrow. You can move back and forth whenever you want. But as soon as you make that Private World custom in any way, your character is locked there.

So yeah, I just don’t get the appeal, beyond a short term diversion to screw around with. I get WHY these limitations are in place. It’d be super easy to make a custom world and twink the hell out of your character and then go back into the public world super buffed. But because of that issue, I just don’t see why they’ve devoted the resources to creating this new feature.

Can anyone educate me? If you’re excited about the feature, please let me know why in the comments.

Custom Worlds is sccheduled to launch on September 8th.

2 thoughts on “Fallout 76 Custom Worlds: I Don’t Get It

  1. Yeah, it’s all weird. I think this is Bethesda’s attempt at fulfilling the promise of allowing modding tools, but it obviously doesn’t press the same buttons. We wanted Skyrim/Fallout 4-ish stuff, and instead we get… whatever this is supposed to be.

  2. It seems like they allow certain cheat modes in the custom worlds, including ‘unlimited legendary crafting’ for instance, so I suppose it makes some sense they wouldn’t want to allow a character to get loaded up here and then wander back into adventure mode.

    But I wonder if it might’ve made more sense to just have certain options disable free character movement.

    Although if they did that, what’s the incentive to continue paying indefinitely to have this custom world and most current version of your character? xD

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