Fallout 76: Interview with Jonathan Rush in London 2024
In London I not only had the opportunity to participare on this great event on 12th Nov 2024, meet Bethesda Germany, and see new features, I also had the chance to meet Fallout 76 Creative Director Jonathan Rush and Executive Producer Bill LaCoste in person. And not only that, I was even able to ask Jon Rush the questions from the London event post directly. I was very happy about this surprising, great opportunity. If someone had predicted this to me 2 weeks ago, I wouldn't have believed them.
Many thanks to the Bethesda Germany Community Management!
Interview with Jon Rush (Fallout 76 Creative Director)
New Map Expansions
Nuka Knights: Since we received a nice new map expansion in Skyline Valley, we could imagine more map expansions in the Forest, Toxic Valley, the Mire etc. Do you have plans about that already?
Jon Rush: So the great thing about Skyline Valley is how, through expanding the map, through expanding the bounds of our Appalachia, we were able to tell more of the story of Appalachia. I always thought of that as the main character, but at the same time giving players the agency to tell their own stories.
Through camp building and exploring and adventuring and stuff. So a true expansion of the map. So our players really loved that. We loved it too for what it gave us as developers. So doing more of that in the future? Absolutely. I mean it's been discussed what the concrete plans are. I couldn't really say.
But the types of updates that give us the ability to do that and our players the ability to do the same are definitely, are definitely what we're drawn to the most.
Nuka Knights: Okay, I'm looking forward to that.
Loadout Switch via Pip Boy
Nuka Knights: We love to use different loadouts and quickly switch them with the punchcard machines, but would it be possible to add a kind of option to the pip boy to switch loadouts?
Jon Rush: Possibly. Is there there a reason they don't want to go to the punchcard machine?
Nuka Knights: Well, it is easy if you have Fallout 1st, then you have the Survival tent. But if you don't, then it might be a problem for some players. Well, I have Fallout 1st, that's not a problem. But there are also some locations where it's difficult to switch.
Maybe it would be more convenient to switch in certain situations or while in combat when you decide: Okay, my ammo for rifles is empty, but I have heavy guns with me and power ammor and I'll switch the build within the combat. Like that.
Jon Rush: It's certainly an interesting idea. You know, in Gleaming Depths inbetween each encounter we've got a traversal space. And in each traversal space we do have Machines for folks that want to re-spec. Keeping that in mind those, that are going to want to make their own play styles.
Making it that convenient with PipBoy, possibly. I mean, it would be worth, worth discussing. I think it's an interesting idea.
Exchange of Ingame-Currency
Nuka Knights: There are a lot of endgame players who sit on huge amounts of in game currency like caps, gold bullion, stamps, and perk coins. Would it be possible to add some kind of currency swap machines, where players can exchange from one currency to another?
Jon Rush: Oh, like kind of like a, yeah, like an exchange machine?
Nuka Knights: Yeah, for coins, for stamps, or whatever.
Jon Rush: Maybe. You know, a good, a thing that those different currencies do is it encourages people to engage in the content that the currency is tied to. So, I would say if we ever did put something in that let you exchange currency, it wouldn't be cheap. Thats also an interesting idea.
Safe Trading System
Nuka Knights: I have another question about trading. We do have a big part of the community that likes to trade rare items for other rare items. And currently the trading system doesn't allow us to trade one for the other item. We can just sell for caps. This leads to scamming.
I know people who maintain scammer lists. And people have to check these lists, if they should make that trade or not. Would it be possible to, add a feature to swap items actually, so that both players can choose one item to swap, or two, or whatever. With a confirmation screen that both have to confirm, and after that, it gets transferred?
Jon Rush: Yeah, we've discussed that a bit too. With the specific plans for it though. I can't really reveal, but to the point you're making. Well, the way I see it is: we're in a wasteland, we're gonna want to trade stuff. Here's ten cigarettes for a magazine, you know what I mean? And to me, that just feels It's kind of fun, being able to trade players kind of making their own currencies in a way, instead of just relying on cash.
So yeah, we've had discussions about that. We recognize that too. That's a good question.
5 Stars and Level 50+ Gear
Nuka Knights: So, we're getting four star legendary items in the raid. And we also saw some armor above Level 50 for a short time on the PTS, which was reverted then to level 50 again. Will we get, even five star legendaries one day or level 60, level 70 armor or weapons or something like that?
Jon Rush: Possibly. I would say if there are more events challenging as raids that come out, that maybe get harder and harder. People are going to need better and better gear. So Yeah, if five star fits that that would certainly be on the table.
Nuka Knights: Interesting.
Changes to old Events
Nuka Knights: We have a lot of older events that pop up daily and public events and stuff. Do you plan to add new rewards to this old events or add new stages to this old events or something else to make them more appealing again?
Jon Rush: Yes.
Nuka Knights: Very good.
Jon Rush: I've got a big whiteboard in my office with every event listed on there.
Nuka Knights: That's great.
Jon Rush: And yes, the answer is yes.
Nuka Knights: Very good.
Playstation Stability
Nuka Knights:I got several questions about PlayStation stability because a lot of people have very much problems with crashes, CE Errors, etc. I do not experience this on Xbox or PC that much, but sometimes there's a crash.
People complain so much about this PlayStation. do you have a, some kind of team that checks out these platform issues?
Jon Rush: We do. We've actually looked into that, fairly recently and there was a fix that went out and I believe there is another one in the works.
But yeah, they caught something on the, on the PlayStation that was a bit different than the Xbox.
New ultra rare items
Nuka Knights: There are very rare items, like the tattered field jacket, or camo forest jumpsuit, etc. and those are in the game since release. Are there plans to add more ultra rare items, maybe in Skyline Valley or new areas?
Jon Rush: I love the idea of ultra rare items. So yes, absolutely there is. Not only just adding them, but kind of intertwining them in new features we haven't even announced yet. But yeah, I do love the idea of having those.
Our players, you know, they're really into prestige, right? And it's like: hey look at the things I have or look at the camp I built. Go to somebody's camp and they're showing you everything, throwing free stuff down at your feet. So people that have those those really rare items, they love to show them off rightfully so they're hard to get. I do love the idea of that, and it doesn't even have to just be items. It could be player titles, right, player titles are a big big deal. Like, look at other games that have player titles. People love collecting those titles. So, yeah, we have a lot of different avenues to express that sort of prestige for having collected that rare thing.
New Skyline Valley Events
Nuka Knights: Do you have plans for more public events in Skyline Valley or other events? There are just those Horde-Events now and basically Neurological Warfare and dangerous pastimes event. Are there plans for more?
Jon Rush: Yeah, we do have plans. One thing that we're trying to be really conscious of, is not putting out a new feature and stopping development or support on it down the road.
I think, you know, one thing that we learned from making Skyline Valley is, you know, evolving something, like evolving the big map is really appealing to players and to us too. So, dialing in a bit further into, like, some of the smaller areas and flushing those out more. We talked about that already.
Nuka Knights: Yeah, great.
Patch Dates in the Community Calendar
Nuka Knights: Would it be possible to add, patch dates to the community calendar?
Jon Rush: Oh!
Nuka Knights: So, actual dates. Where we can see, when the season ends. We currently have to estimate those dates. And mostly they are, you know, kind of correct, but we never know until it's confirmed.
Jon Rush: Yeah, we have talked about ways to more clearly communicate how much time is left in a season.
So there's not that kind of confusion. We have had talks about it. The thing with seasons and the thing about working on our game is, despite best intentions being able to get these improvements in. It's a really slow moving ship. There's so many moving parts with this game, that they're trying to get something in really quick will normally just break everything else.
So we have to take very slow measured steps to get these things in. But yes, we have talked about that.
Double Mutated Events
Nuka Knights: What about double mutated events? We have mutated events already, and we have those double mutations in daily operations. And what about public events?
Jon Rush: We've talked about that.
Are you reading my mind?
Nuka Knights: Yeah *laughs*.
Atomic Shop Item Gifts
Nuka Knights: So, the last questions are: Someone asked, if it could be possible to buy Atomic Shop items for friends, to gift them.
Jon Rush: To gift them Atomic Shop items for friends.
Nuka Knights: Would it be possible at least?
Jon Rush: Maybe. Being able to trade Atomic Shop items could open up the door to a lot of unintended consequences. *laughs*
Nuka Knights: No, not trading. Well, just to buy them for some kind of gamer tag.
Jon Rush: Gotcha.
Nuka Knights: When you send something from Amazon to some other address.
Jon Rush: Yeah. I think that could be kind of fun. I don't think that that's something we had discussed too much. I remember it coming up in the past a bit. Probably the reason why conversations ended there was for the technical lift that were required.
But I could see that being, I could see that being pretty fun. I'll bring that up again. That’s cool.
Best Builds
Nuka Knights: A lot of people were confused about best builds at first, when the vendors weren't usable. We discussed that also and a lot of players said, maybe it would be better if these best builds would actually work on active camps.
So not this kind of ghost camp, so that when you see someone playing and you want to give them a vote for his camp and you like his camp, then you can actually interact with this player and buy from his vendor and give him a vote. And that's not possible currently, because they just pop up randomly somewhere.
Would that be an idea?
Jon Rush: Possibly. So, the Best Builds that we've released now, we actually have a lot of big plans for Best Builds as an ever evolving feature. So what we've done now is kind of like a really solid first step, kind of laying the technical groundwork for it. And actually, one cool thing I saw was, when Best Builds first came out, you'd see a lot of camps popping up. Like, oh look, it's a toilet camp. But over time, now you're seeing really quality camps kind of popping up more and more like really cool camps for the best build.
So from what we've seen, you know, the intent is working. It's like the groundwork is there. The plans we have for that feature down the road are going to make it very, very robust. And things like that have been discussed and taken into consideration. But, it's nothing I can talk about in too much detail now, but we'll enjoy talking about it down the road once we have it.
Nuka Knights: Or maybe, maybe the players can decide if they want to have an active camp to vote for.
Jon Rush: Oh, sure.
Nuka Knights: So that the other system that we have already stays in. And also, they can opt in, for example. Just like that. Maybe it would be an idea.
Jon Rush: Yeah, maybe.
Nuka Knights: That's all my questions. Thank you!
Jon Rush: I love your videos, sir.
Nuka Knights: Thank you!
Jon Rush: Yeah, it's great to see you.
Unfortunately, we will not be able to talk about other interesting features that we were able to see and test at the Fallout 76 London event until December 19, 2024.
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