Fallout 76 has had quite a long journey in the past few years since its original release in 2018. Among some of the changes that the game has embraced throughout numerous major updates, one of the biggest changes to Fallout 76 has been the gradual decline in support for PvP.
The upcoming playable Ghoul character in Fallout 76 arriving in March 2025 arguably has the perfect chance to reintroduce PvP elements to the game, specifically via the Ghoul’s Feral mechanics. However, the fate of PvP in Fallout 76 may already be sealed, so the playable Ghoul will likely pass up on this golden opportunity to revive it.
What To Expect From Fallout 76 in 2025
While 2024 will be a hard year to compete with, 2025 is already shaping up to be another major year for Fallout 76 based on the franchise’s momentum.
The Golden Days of Fallout 76’s PvP May Be Long Gone
When Fallout 76 was first released it was widely expected that players would resort to their violent instincts to navigate the MMO’s post-apocalyptic wasteland. Surprisingly, quite the opposite has turned out to be true. Since many Fallout 76 players don’t regularly participate in PvP, this has led to some of the dedicated PvP activities in the game being either removed or made optional.
Ever since Fallout 76’s battle royale game mode was cut, there has been a growing sentiment among parts of the game’s community that PvP could someday make a return. This lingering hope has continued to grow amidst recent balancing changes, the removal of Fallout 76's illegal legacy weapons, and the game recently hitting record-high player counts, which have led the state of the game in a direction where PvP could potentially be met with greater support than ever before.
However, during the Fallout 76 panel at Quakecon 2024, Fallout 76’s creative director Jon Rush, and lead producer Bill LaCoste both openly expressed that PvP isn’t likely to make a comeback. “The impression we’ve gotten both from feedback and seeing how our players play is that PvP is just kind of — it’s not an itch they’re looking to scratch in Fallout 76,” said Rush, “[…] Straight up PvP, it just doesn’t seem to be in our players’ DNA.” Consequently, despite the current state of the game seeming like the perfect opportunity to finally revive this ailing mechanic, PvP may never make a comeback in Fallout 76.
Fallout 76’s Playable Ghoul Character Has the Perfect Opportunity to Revive PvP
The doomed state of PvP in Fallout 76 is especially unfortunate news considering that the upcoming playable Ghoul character will likely miss out on the perfect opportunity to incorporate PvP. Among some of the new Ghoul-exclusive buildcrafting tools coming in Fallout 76’s Season 20 update in March 2025 is the Ghoul’s new Feral mechanic.
Ahead of the Ghoul playable character officially arriving in March 2025, parts of this upcoming update are currently available for players to playtest in Fallout 76’s Public Test Server.
As players come closer to becoming fully Feral as a Ghoul in Fallout 76, this will come with debuffs to their max health and AP, but it will eventually give players a powerful melee damage boost. In the Fallout franchise’s lore, when a Ghoul becomes Feral they enter a frenzied state where they will uncontrollably attack anyone nearby. Fallout 76’s playable Ghoul character could embrace this mechanic by flagging players for PvP when they become fully Feral, making it a high-risk and high-reward playstyle.
Given that the golden days of PvP in Fallout 76 have long since passed, this seemingly perfect opportunity for the playable Ghoul character to incorporate PvP will likely be overlooked. Players can still manually flag themselves for PvP by activating it in the game’s settings, but this feature not being the default for playing as a fully Feral Ghoul in Fallout 76 is arguably a missed opportunity to potentially revive PvP. Consequently, PvP in Fallout 76 may ultimately be doomed to permanently remain an ailing mechanic that might never be restored to its former glory.
Fallout 76
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 54 /100 Critics Rec: 9%
WHERE TO PLAY
Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of Skyrim and Fallout 4, welcome you to Fallout 76. Twenty-five years after the bombs fell, you and your fellow Vault Dwellers—chosen from the nation’s best and brightest – emerge into post-nuclear America on Reclamation Day, 2102. Play solo or join together as you explore, quest, build, and triumph against the wasteland’s greatest threats. Explore a vast wasteland, devastated by nuclear war, in this open-world multiplayer addition to the Fallout story. Experience the largest, most dynamic world ever created in the legendary Fallout universe. Expand southward to Skyline Valley – a brand-new region of Appalachia. Investigate the cause of the electric storm circling overhead and unveil the mystery around Vault 63 and its dwellers, including a shocking new Ghoul type – The Lost.
