Greetings to you. This is a brief post to state that I have resurrected my clan of characters and have even been enjoying the game through Double XP weekend.
The game at least on PC has been through a rough time and that has had an effect on the economy in no small way. I shall update the price list both before and after Wastelanders drops (April 7th 2020).
A couple of things that immediately stand out since I stopped playing the game (in October 2019) are that staples such as stable flux, ammo and lead have seen increased prices. I see fluxes at both the old price (100-150) and the new (250-300). I’ve seen lead go for 6 caps apiece in bulk (compare to last year’s average of 2-3 caps).
The focus of this blog was never to price legendary gear but it’s worth outlining the crazy sequence of events which has impacted the in-game economy.
- Fallout 1st. A monthly or annual subscription that includes unlimited scrap storage. FO1st Players no longer need to clear their junk at bargain basement prices.
- Inventory hacks. Christmas 2019 was not the season of goodwill for some Fallout 76 players. Some players were virtually pickpocketed and they didn’t even need to be anyway near the perpetrator!
- More duplicate hacks
- Item import hacks (port in gear that isn’t even in the game, especially from Fallout 4)
- Legendary Purveyor unintended bargain sale. Murmugghrrmrmrmr (however you spell her name) was at one point shortly before I returned to the game selling back scripped legendary items and I believe letting players choose a specific item instead of getting a random roll. Sounds like fun and I’m sorry I missed it in a way. It seems like quite a few players took advantage of this…
This has all compounded to a fall in the number of live players at least on PC. By my reckoning, in the break between October 2019 and March 2020 there are somewhere between 25% and 50% of players still active. This was most noticeable during the last Double XP weekend when very few of my regular contacts were online. I cannot testify if the situation is similar on console. I had already noticed a slump on the /r/FO76 subreddit new posts per day prior to my break which isn’t empirical evidence but at least an indicator that players were leaving.
So why did I return?
I continued to keep abreast of the FO76 news mostly via the subreddit. At some point my distaste for the game left and I actually became nostalgic for it. Familiarity breeds contempt they say and yes if you’re playing a game every day for a year, you are going to become sick of it. But my emotional memories of bugs, failed trades and a hindering UI faded and I just wanted to shoot mutants and Scorched in the head with that satisfying “schploop” noise again.
If you’ve read my previous posts you’ll know I worked very hard to build up a small empire of characters and some of that work involved logging in every day to grab caps from the vendors as well as buying massive amounts of bulk junk to make serums. This became a chore. And I’m not too keen on “the grind”.
So when I came back a week or so ago, I took it easy, went exploring and even turned the music on. Suddenly it was like a new game. I think my brain turns over memories pretty quickly and currently I would describe my feelings for a game I had grown out of love with as “fond”.
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TC
Fallout 76 Trading Guide 