When it comes to Bethesda games, there is one thing that fans have come to expect – mods. From Skyrim hacks that make you undead, to Fallout mods that let you play as a cat in a box, Bethesda RPGs are renowned for letting players tweak and twist them into almost unrecognisable experiences. Yet, with Fallout 76 taking the wasteland online, it was hard to imagine a shared world that could be modded without turning it into a haven for cheaters. Thankfully though, when speaking to Bethesda in West Virginia, the team confirmed that it will be bringing private servers to the table, and with them — Fallout 76 mods.
“Sometime in the future — way in the future — we are fully going to embrace mods and then do something we’re calling private worlds,” explains the game’s Project Leader Jeff Gardiner. “We don’t usually try to use the word server so much …. we’re trying to call them worlds, and these are going to be private worlds that folks will be able to set up and mod to their heart’s content.”
It turns out Fallout 76 mods were always part of the vision for the game, yet, for the team, creating a working and enjoyable online experience was the priority.
“We obviously love the mod community and love supporting them, but allowing the mod community to come in and mod this game… The possibility of breaking the experience…it’s something we couldn’t risk [ at launch],” adds Design Director, Chris Meyer, “In Fallout 4, you’re responsible for your own experience. On a private server, you’d be responsible for the experience of others.”
Like with Skyrim and Fallout 4 before it, Jeff is expecting things to get pretty weird once private servers find their way into ’76. And because of the potential to gather an excess of items or game-breaking weapons, players (understandably) won’t be able to transfer characters from private servers back into public ones.
“It’d be sort of up to that curator — or whatever you want to call them — to be responsible for that experience, right? So, if it’s you know, they can do all – cotton candy houses – or whatever they wanted to do… Your characters at that point will have to stay on those servers,” says Gardiner, “You couldn’t bring them back into a game like this where you could go in that world, grab all ammo, come back into a regular game and grief all day.”
To find out everything else we know about Fallout 76, check out the article below.