The upcoming Fallout 76 from Bethesda essentially sees the largely single-player RPG franchise transform into something of an MMO. As is the case with multiplayer games, there are bound be times when you run into players who seem to have no other intention other than to harass or grief you by killing your characters over and over again.Bethesda had previously stated that they are planning on introducing ways to deal with such situations, and a recent report from VG247 has revealed how exactly they will be addressing the problem. Speaking at a recent roundtable, Bethesda’s VP of Marketing Pete Hines reveals that players who “murder” other players (as in players who don’t consent to a fight) will be given huge debuffs for a couple of hours.
This debuff will reduce the amount of damage they do in PvP and PvE situations, and they will also lose whatever caps they have down to zero. It also seems that this debuff cannot be waited out by logging out of the game, meaning that players will have to remain in the game to run the timer out.
According to Hines, “For two hours in the game, you’re going to be spitting spitballs at enemies to remind you that you’re a murderer. Remember, we speak about murder as you killing someone who didn’t want to fight and wasn’t interested in engaging, not you fired at me, I fired at you, we both wanted to do this. It’s specifically to stop people doing this where it’s negative and one-sided. It’s meant to not be fun – you will do far less damage with anything you use for a period of time.”
It is an interesting tactic and we can’t wait to see if this might deter such players. Fallout 76 is currently set for a release for the 14th of November.