Bethesda's long-running 2018 MMO-lite RPG Fallout 76 is still going strong, with the experimental multiplayer spinoff of the beloved post-apocalyptic franchise maintaining a healthy community of players through regular content updates. The latest of these was the Burning Springs expansion that prominently features The Ghoul from the Fallout TV show; another very notable release was the Gleaming Depths update that came in late 2024.
Gleaming Depths featured a special four-player endgame raid of the same name, and challenged a squad of Vault Dwellers to progress through an arduous, lengthy dungeon that requires communication and ends with a climactic boss battle. Compared to everything else in Fallout 76, Gleaming Depths was a huge step up both in terms of difficulty and rewards, with players able to walk away from completions with 4-star Legendary gear, unique crafting blueprints, tons of XP and materials, and more.
That desire for many different kinds of setups to be viable, however, shines light on one of Fallout 76's biggest issues: the amount of time you have to spend in menus if you want to swap your build. Though the RPG is actually the first in Fallout history to support full and unlimited respecs, there's no way to quickly switch between loadouts. Thankfully, Bethesda is exploring ways to address this.
"We also want to figure out ways to make changing out loadouts — and changing full loadouts, meaning armor and things like that — a little bit easier for players, so you can do that without the time sink that is required for it," lead producer Bill LaCoste commented. "I really do want people to have multiple loadouts and outfits that go along with the content they're trying to engage in."
"We need to make it a little bit easier and make some adjustments, either on the job board side, or maybe some other tools that we can add for players too," he continued. The studio's overall goal is "to give people more time playing the game rather than dealing with their inventory," because the developer is "very much against 'playing the UI,' we want to play the game."
Be that as it may, though, it's important to note that Bethesda may still explore nudging people towards trying out new setups or tweaking their builds with future gameplay obstacles. "With that said, you know, hypothetically, if there was another raid, maybe the challenges would be skewed a bit differently so that people would need to think of other ways to play through it or gear up for it, you know?" Rush added.
Whether you're interested in new Fallout 76 raids or not, it's great to hear that the developers want to make changing builds easier. A system they should look to to try and emulate, in my opinion, is Destiny 2's Loadout mechanic; it allows you to save and swap between builds with the click of a button, automatically changing everything from your chosen subclass abilities and modifiers to your gear and all the mods you've equipped on them.
Are you a fan of Fallout 76? Would you be excited to see another raid similar to Gleaming Depths come to Bethesda's multiplayer RPG? Let me know in the comments.
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