Fallout 76 will be Bethesda’s first foray into multiplayer for one of their core RPG titles. As a studio best-known for single-player games, some fans have been skeptical of the shift. Although Bethesda has been clear that multiplayer won’t be the new norm for them, much remains to be seen about Fallout 76 multiplayer.
Speaking in a recent string of interviews with PCGamesN, representatives from several game studios gave their thoughts on Bethesda approaching multiplayer for Fallout 76. Although Bethesda has published multiplayer games before, perhaps most notably, Elder Scrolls Online; Bethesda Game Studios itself has never worked on multiplayer. Of course, much of the multiplayer coding for Fallout 76 was done by Bethesda’s new Austin-based studio; filled with veteran developers from BioWare’s MMO branch.
Facepunch Studios
Garry Newman, head of Facepunch Studios, believes that cheating will be Bethesda’s biggest challenge. Facepunch Studios developed Rust, one of the most successful online survival games available on Steam. “I can’t imagine they’ll do a worse job than us. The only big thing really is cheats. Cheats are the bane of PC game development. You’ll spend more time responding to cheats than actually making the game. It’s the one thing consoles have on us.”
Bethesda has already stated that the studio will be implementing private servers post-launch. However, these servers are primarily designed for mod use. No doubt cheaters will still be an issue on PC.
Irrational Games
Jonathan Chey, co-founder of Irrational Games, the studio that made Bioshock, says that Bethesda should expect servers to die. “I think it’s odd how almost every successful multiplayer game runs into load issues when it launches. It’s obviously really hard to properly stress test servers prior to launch. I have no idea what the solution to that problem is and we certainly didn’t solve it.”
Phoenix Labs
Phoenix Labs was founded by developers from Riot Games, and the studio is currently developing Dauntless, a cooperative action RPG. As such, their team is well-suited to offer insight to this issue. For them, both cheating and servers are major problems.
“Detecting and removing players for cheating is easy enough,” they say; “but that’s a short term measure. Educating players, listening to why they want to cheat in the first place, and finding cheats at their source has been instrumental in helping build a healthy online game space. One thing is certain – you need to understand and accept that you will have cheaters and dedicate effort toward mitigating it. Competition brings out the best in us, but sometimes the desire to win brings out the worst.”
Both Todd Howard and Pete Hines have offered their reassurances to fans that Bethesda is taking griefing seriously. However, a lot of their specific steps remain hazy. Phoenix Labs offered their take on the issue, which seems like the right attitude for Bethesda to take; “Griefing is an interesting topic and something not just contained to games. We strive to positively incentivise and reward players for positive behavior instead of punish for negative behavior. Verbal abuse, discrimination, or actively trying to ruin the game for others is never cool, and we don’t tolerate it.”