Fallout 76 Players Throw Up Their Hands

Like some cruel and bewildering joke, Fallout 76 players have discovered that the game’s latest patch accidentally re-broke something that had previously been fixed, and they are not happy.

Bobby pins, used in Fallout 76 to pick locks, originally weighed a ridiculous 0.1 pounds. Earlier this month, Bethesda finally patched them to make them weigh 0.001, something that was both more realistic and helped free up much-needed space in players’ inventories.

After yesterday’s Patch 5, they’re back to weighing 0.1. It might seem like a small problem, but for players who have spent the last couple of months running out of patience, it’s just the latest in a series of discouraging signs that keep piling up.

Many players are also disappointed with a series of tweaks yesterday’s patch made to the game’s perk system. Cards like Demolition Expert, which grants bonus damage when using explosives, was nerfed from 100% at its max level down to 60%.

Other cards, like White Knight and Licensed Plumber, saw similar reductions in their effectiveness. People who invested in those skills now feel they’re at a big disadvantage and have asked for some way to respec when future changes like this happen. Another outspoken group of players feels increasingly turned off by Bethesda’s approach to nerfing items and abilities it sees as being too powerful, rather than making other ones stronger to help compensate.

Other players are angry that new microtransaction items continue to get added to the game’s Atom store while all of this is going on, to which a Bethesda community manager responded that the Atom team is separate from the one working on bug fixes and patches.

“I understand that it can be frustrating to see [the Atom store] updated when you’re waiting for game play updates but it’s separate from those working on the code,” they wrote on the game’s subreddit.

People’s dissatisfaction with the continued state of Fallout 76 has been compounded by allegations that the latest patch has also brought back some of the item-duplicating exploits that plagued the game earlier in the month.

In a thread that blew up on the game’s subreddit overnight, user gX-kiD notes that there has been a flood of new listings for rare in-game items on Ebay since yesterday. A quick search shows over a hundred new postings for things like legendary two-shot assault rifles and tri-barrell miniguns, but so far there hasn’t been any solid evidence that duping has made a full-blown comeback.