Todd Howard, director of Bethesda Game Studios, has been refreshingly candid about Fallout 76's failures both on stage at the company's E3 2019 press conference and during interviews on the show floor. During a segment with Gamespot's Mike Mahardy and Lucy James, he detailed his regrets over how Fallout 76 was initially presented to the public.
In the interview, Todd Howard says: "My main regret is not doing a beta that a lot of people could play, like if we had made it free for every Fallout 4 player and ran a 24/7 beta for a longer period of time, that would have let us see what we were really dealing with here."
He then goes on to say that the tests Bethesda did run were concentrated due to a worry over peak concurrency, and as such, the studio didn't get a chance to see how the game behaved on a larger scale over a longer period of time. However, not even those pre-release betas went particularly smoothly, as our own hands on piece back in early November didn't paint a pretty picture for the Fallout spin-off.
Do you think bigger betas on a larger scale would have helped Fallout 76? Let us know in the comments below.
[source youtu.be]
Comments 16
Doing real beta and not early demo would have been the better idea. Having a ‘beta’ a few weeks before launch doesn’t do much...it’s been what, 8 months since launch and they’re still fixing little issues that should have been resolved through proper betas and delayed release dates.
Tried the demo of this the other day. Most of the time it crashed before it loaded. When it did load (and boy did it take a LONG time), it looked like some sort of PS2/PS3 reject so it was uninstalled promptly.
I regret buying Fallout 76.
jk of course, I only buy good games
@Octane you have my deepest condolences
My fiance and I have been playing the free trial together(as we have to TVs right next to each other ], and I have to say it s been a fun experience so far. We are only about level 10 or so have encountered around 20+ players without a single shot being fired! Going from GTA Online to this made that fact a bit mind blowing lol. Honestly have experienced any bugs except maybe a mole rat that couldn't get out of the ground, which I was okay with honestly lol.
I tried the free trial last night. It literally crashed every single time I tried respawning after dying. Unbelievable.
I don't believe anything he says, not to be trusted.
This game literally gives me a headache.
Never has just looking at a game elicited such a negative physical reaction from me.
The graphics and the frame rate are unbearable and actually painful to look at for extended periods of time of around an hour. It was terrible.
Absolutely horrible.
I don't understand how anyone can stomach playing this game. I regret the two hours I wasted playing this trash; I would have much rather spent my time getting waterboarded and having bamboo shoots shoved into my cuticles than ever play this absolute trash boat, clown shoes, jenkem fire of a "game"!
Todd Howard should be sent to a gulag and forced to play Fallout 76 for 18 hours a day everyday on PS4 until Elder Scrolls VI releases.
He can joke about that next E3!
What a ****ing hero!
I guess the only thing he can say is stuff like this because no company is going to go, well we had this game and it wasn't ready but our shareholders wanted us to ship it and well, it's a live service and Fallout so we thought, to heck with it...
However, all this would have done would be to reduce sales because the feedback would have been so negative, as it was during the beta, that they would have had to move the launch date. I am sorry but they knew this wasn't ready to ship.
He should regret not making it fun
Why do people still expect anything even remotely close to quality coming from Bethesda?
They didn't run enough betas Todd,or that the modders that had saved your PC (& more recent XB efforts), were shut out of '76 & exposed how bug-ridden & dated your game-engine is?
Wouldn't hit up the free trial if he paid us....even if it was more than his "Wooooh!" crowd front row(s).
I would happily set up a deck chair & some chicken wings to watch him face a Jim Stirling interview rather than a promo IGN grovelling effort though!!
Properly the nearest we will get to an apology from that jack ass.
Bethesda should do QA on a bigger scale rather than beta.
Anthem and Fallout 76 are 50% off through the Days of Play sale, which is still 100% too much.
Todd's just dwelling on past regrets and looking forward to his DLC roadmap, when he should be in the present fixing the darn game.
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