The signature of Fallout 76’s latest free update, The Backwoods, is obviously the addition of everyone’s favourite elusive cryptid, Bigfoot. But the patch also brings some much-needed changes to events and activities. For starters, you can actually tell their icons apart now.
“One of the first things you guys will notice is that we’ve differentiated between public events and activities in Update 66, and one of the ways you can tell that right now is with an icon,” senior systems designer Kevin Wienecke says in a presentation.
“Activities are made for one to five people or so, and they pop off every 10 minutes. There are up to three that can happen at any one time. But then we also have public events, they’re meant for more people, with lots of players in mind. They’re balanced appropriately, and they have more rewards.”
Players can earn more rewards if they stay until the end of an activity, which is when an uninvited guest could pop up. It could be a three-star legendary boss or even Bigfoot, who is a four-star with an exclusive drop. But even if you don’t want to stick around for this after-match fight, you’ll still get more out of the activity now as XP is rewarded according to your player level. “So the higher level you are, the more XP you get,” Wienecke explains.
Around 50 events and activities have been adjusted in this latest update. “We tried to concentrate on the broad strokes, lots of changes without disrupting the events that everybody likes,” Wienecke adds.
Other than an XP boost for higher levels, uninvited guests, and new icons, some activities and events have been shortened, so they don’t feel like a drag. “We’ve tightened up the timers a little bit,” Wienecke says. “That’s a good example of the changes that we’ve made, wherever we felt that it was kind of dragging on a little bit, we tried to tighten up the timers.”
Besides activities and events, there are also new performance improvements to the Pip-Boy: “It may not sound like a big deal, but it is, “creative director Jon Rush says. “Once you get in and start messing with it, you’ll definitely feel the difference.”
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