Fallout 76 – April 2020 Updates

The Wastelanders expansion for Fallout 76 launched earlier this month, accompanied by the game’s Steam release. This new launch ended up being quite successful, according to this PC Gamer article that notes Fallout 76’s fairly positive Steam reviews and their contrast with its original less than stellar reception.

With that in mind, we can now check out this development update that shares a thank you message, lists a number of upcoming events, and talks about the future of the game’s Private Test Server. Here’s more on the latter:

FUTURE PATCHES AND THE PTS

Wastelanders may have just launched earlier this week, but we’re already reading through your feedback, bug reports, and thoughts as we look forward to future updates for the game.

Prior to launch, players in our Wastelanders Private Test Server (PTS) shared crucial feedback that helped us shape some of the systems in Wastelanders, squash a ton of bugs before release, and get a head start on investigating many more. We couldn’t have released Wastelanders with its current level of polish without their tireless efforts, reports, and feedback. Those of you who took part in the PTS have our sincere gratitude. We’re humbled by your dedication to this game, and we hope the rest of the community will join us in extending thanks to you as well.

With that in mind, we want to utilize the PTS for as many of our patches going forward as possible. We are currently looking into expanding the PTS to include many more players in the future. We’ll have more details to share about how you can participate once we’re closer to firing up the PTS again for a future patch.

Speaking of future updates, our next is currently planned for May. It will largely focus on a few quality-of-life improvements, the return of the Fasnacht Seasonal Event, and bug fixes. Many of those fixes are for issues reported by the extremely dedicated players in the Wastelanders PTS, which we did not have time to implement prior to launch.

Thanks again, and we will see you in Appalachia!

Then, there’s also this Eurogamer article that can be viewed as a review of sorts for the Wastelanders expansion. An excerpt:

There’s a lot I’ve yet to encounter. I’m not far off getting to the new vault, but I’ve yet to see it. Apparently I can romance an ally, so I’m keeping an eye out for those dialogue options. I haven’t got to the point yet where I have meaningfully experienced the new Gold Bullion system. This new currency, which apparently will end up being the late game caps/time sink, is the ticket to the new endgame gear (the new power armour, that sort of thing). And I’ve only brushed up against the Blood Eagles raiders and the Cult of the Mothman – and by that I mean I ran away as their high-level cronies shot me in the back.

Fallout 76 is actually a game I want to play now, which is something I never thought I’d say after reviewing the thing back in November 2018. Even on the tech side of things the game is much better than it was. I’m not sure if this is something brought about with Wastelanders, but the game runs a lot better on my base PlayStation 4 than it did at launch. There are occasional severe framerate issues, but on the whole it runs okay, and I have yet to encounter a game-breaking bug. This is a win for Fallout 76, as far as I’m concerned.