You Know The Rules, Damn It
The last two years have been a harsh lesson for game developers and publishers the world over. If you put pay-to-win items or systems in your game, people notice. They also hate it! So it’s a little confusing to see Bethesda catching heat over pay-to-win items in Fallout 76, a game people are already pretty mad at.
Patch 8 is coming for Fallout 76 soon, and with it come Repair Kits. There are two tiers of this item, basic and improved. See where this is going? One kind will be a rare drop and the other kind will be sold in the Atomic Shop. This creates a system where people who spend real money will be able to survive player encounters better than those who don’t. It’s a small edge, but a worrisome one.
Players are worried that this sets a negative precedent. The backlash is such that the old lesson should be even more obvious by now: no pay-to-win items under any circumstances. No matter what the advantage, people will find a way to exploit it and upset the competitive ecosystem. Therefore it’s best not to introduce said advantage at all. Especially in a game as… delicate as Fallout 76.