Bethesda’s Todd Howard Talks About How Fallout 76 Will Deter Griefing

Fallout 76 director Todd Howard appeared at QuakeCon recently to talk about the upcoming game, detailing how PvP will work, and how griefing will be deterred. [Thanks, USGamer!]

PvP is initiated when one player starts to shoot at another player. At first, damage is scaled down against the person being shot, but if the other player reciprocates, damage is restored to normal values. A cap reward is then determined based on player level, and players are incentivized into fighting higher-leveled players, as they will give more caps.

For people who don’t plan on fighting PvP, there will be a “pacifist flag” feature which will disable damage on other players. While pacifist players can still be killed, they can block or ignore players who have killed them once.

Of course, there are people who just want to ruin everyone’s fun, but Howard says that they’ll be turned into “interesting content” in the process. By murdering someone who doesn’t want to engage in PvP, the griefer gets branded as a murderer, and won’t get a cap reward. They will be seen by everybody on the map as a red star, which means they have a bounty on them. The bounty is paid out of the branded player’s own cap count, so there’s no benefit to griefing at all.

Check out the full video below:

Fallout 76 will come to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on November 14, 2018.