Fallout 76 to Feature Matchmade Player Vs. Player Combat

Noah Buttner October 8, 2018 10:00 AM EST

Fallout 76 is preventing griefing by giving PvP-focused players a place to blow off some steam in the form of a matchmade radio station.

Fallout 76 definitely occupies a strange space in the player versus player/player versus environment realm. It’s a game which encourages you to roleplay and build your own settlements, but it also gives players the chance to shoot at you. Hopefully, through the game’s in-depth anti-griefing systems as well as the matchmade PvP, players will be able to take their murderous urges out on someone who’s not you.

I got the chance to go hands-on with Fallout 76 at a preview event this past week. While many reporters were interested in exploring the virtual expanses of West Virginia, I wanted to know how easy it was to kill a stranger.

It turns out that the PvP designers over at Bethesda have made it so that innocent players take heavily-reduced damage when they’re not looking to fight back. I couldn’t get an exact number on this damage figure but it’s around the tune of 90% damage reduction, however; the moment you shoot back at your attacker it becomes a level playing field.

For those who are not interested in slaughtering fellow member of Vault 76, it’s incredibly easy to just ignore would-be murderers altogether. Even if they did manage to kill you, they’d then find a bounty on their head with a heavy caps award which comes out of their wallet.

I did discover an interesting radio frequency though: “Hunter/Hunted Radio” appeared in-game and (as with all PvP) requires players to be level 5 to tune to it. It allows players to matchmake with 5 others to form a bounty-hunting battle royale. Each player receives a target and is being targeted by another player. The trick is to be the last one standing. You’ll earn bragging rights as well as a nice reward. You can check out a brief clip of it below. Plus it’s got some spooky audio on the channel too.

Fallout 76 is set to release on November 14. You can check out our preview of the game here, or pre-order the game on Amazon if you haven’t already here.