Like some cruel and bewildering joke, Fallout 76 players have discovered that the game’s latest patch accidentally re-broke something that had previously been fixed, and they are not happy.
Bobby pins, used in Fallout 76 to pick locks, originally weighed a ridiculous 0.1 pounds. Earlier this month, Bethesda finally patched them to make them weigh 0.001, something that was both more realistic and helped free up much-needed space in players’ inventories. After yesterday’s Patch 5, they’re back to weighing 0.1. It might seem like a small problem, but for players who have spent the last couple of months running out of patience, it’s just the latest in a series of discouraging signs that keep piling up.
Many players are also disappointed with a series of tweaks yesterday’s patch made to the game’s perk system. Cards like Demolition Expert, which grants bonus damage when using explosives, was nerfed from 100% at its max level down to 60%. Other cards, like White Knight and Licensed Plumber, saw similar reductions in their effectiveness. People who invested in those skills now feel they’re at a big disadvantage and have asked for some way to respec when future changes like this happen. Another outspoken group of players feels increasingly turned off by Bethesda’s approach to nerfing items and abilities it sees as being too powerful, rather than making other ones stronger to help compensate.
Other players are angry that new microtransaction items continue to get added to the game’s Atom store while all of this is going on, to which a Bethesda community manager responded that the Atom team is separate from the one working on bug fixes and patches. “I understand that it can be frustrating to see [the Atom store] updated when you’re waiting for game play updates but it’s separate from those working on the code,” they wrote on the game’s subreddit.
People’s dissatisfaction with the continued state of Fallout 76 has been compounded by allegations that the latest patch has also brought back some of the item-duplicating exploits that plagued the game earlier in the month. In a thread that blew up on the game’s subreddit overnight, user gX-kiD notes that there has been a flood of new listings for rare in-game items on Ebay since yesterday. A quick search shows over a hundred new postings for things like legendary two-shot assault rifles and tri-barrell miniguns, but so far there hasn’t been any solid evidence that duping has made a full-blown comeback.
While the studio hasn’t publicly addressed the complaints yet, a community manager said in the comments of one of the Reddit threads that the issue with bobby pins and other feedback on the new patch are currently being discussed by the development team.
One theory circulating among players as to why bobby pins are back to being over-weighted is that the newest update used an older build of Fallout 76 that caused some aspects of the game to appear to be back where they were at the beginning of the month. Bethesda did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter.
In response to the latest missteps, there have been renewed calls for Bethesda to implement a beta server where players can test out new patches before they go live in the actual game, to which one player responded “Good news! You’re already in the beta server!”
[Update - 2/1/2019]: Bethesda has released a hotfix to undo the latest change to bobby pin weights. “This issue occurred when a merge of our development builds failed to execute properly prior to releasing patch 5,” the company wrote in its latest Inside the Vault article. “We are working on ways to prevent this from happening again in the future.”
It also addresses issues with no longer being able to auto-scrap bulk scrap, complaints over the uselessness of energy weapons, and a host of other things. Bethesda has also said that it will be maintaining a public list of “Known Issues” going forward.