Fallout 76 Devs Have No Plans For More Out of Map Expeditions

Over the last few years, Bethesda Game Studios has tried to find new ways to broaden the adventure in Fallout 76. In one major way, they accomplished that through Expeditions, a system that took players away from the base map of Appalachia and into the great beyond.

To date, two expeditions have been added, one taking players to The Pitt, and another to Atlantic City. However, talking to Bethesda’s Jon Rush and Bill LaCoste at Summer Game Fest, I learned that there are no plans to add more Expeditions to Fallout 76 going forward, but there are opportunities to expand the base map even further.

No More Expeditions for Fallout 76 Players

Atlantic City and The Pitt offered solid content drops, giving players a way to explore Fallout 76 beyond the base map. In The Pitt, which was released in September 2022, players ventured back to a location introduced in a legendary Fallout 3 expansion. It was well received and was followed up almost two years later with Atlantic City, offering another out-of-map opportunity that was delivered in two parts.

However, since March 2024, Bethesda has stood silent on the future of Expeditions.

At Summer Game Fest, I asked Bethesda directly what the future of Expeditions looked like, and Jon Rush gave me a straight answer when I questioned if there were more in the pipeline:

For an out-of-map thing, no, for an in-map expansion, yes.

The issue with Expeditions is it’s fun content, it’s solid content, but there are some foundational issues with it that make people not want to continue engaging, right?

The base Appalachia map, Rush explained, is a layered, emergent environment where players can better influence what happens, and it naturally has more persistence and way more activities, particularly for those engaging in the endgame loop.

Expeditions, on the other hand, don’t really serve that deeper purpose.

You go in, you do these set things, and you get this, you go in, do you these set things, and you get this… Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Will there be more work for Expeditions down the road? Yes. Initially, not in the sense of ‘here’s a new place’, it’s more to fix that underlying issue to get people to want to engage with that again.

It could look like, ‘Hey, next two week, Expeditions in Atlantic City are open for everybody to go’, and then close it down, right? But change how the rewards are vended.

It’s a good point, because in recent months, the only reason I’ve visited Atlantic City or The Pitt is to grind some outstanding achievements that you can only get in those areas. Aside from that, I’ve got almost no reason to go there.

Short-term, there will be no new Expeditions in Fallout 76, and potentially long-term, too. What there will be are changes to how Expeditions work now to perhaps encourage players to lean on what exists.

Do you think there should be more Expeditions in Fallout 76? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.

For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that someone has remastered Fallout 3 using Unreal Engine