Fallout 4... is coming (10 Nov 2015)

[PREDATOR490]

Reskins currently exist for space marine stuff, some really shoddy attempt at making an imperial outfit and adding a bit of building stuff is all that stands out.

First comes the Tit perverts, then comes the slaughterhouse of outfits that satisfy the costume crowd and somewhere down the line emerges the animated prostitution so you can become a Sex Slave Pimp of the Fallout Wasteland. Now witness Fallout 4 allow the player to build drug dens and brothels.

One only wonders if Bethseda is going to pull the paid - to - mod stunt again with the addition of releasing the GECK. I have seen defenders of the FO bullshit weapons and style as being a way to avoid paying to include real life equivelents. No surprise that as soon as the GECK gets released folks are going to be pushing and turning out exactly those kinds of mods. Beth could easily kill this game's longevity with a profit-mod system.

[TheFeniX]

Ha, oh man. I lied. From looking around, the creator of CBBE (the first nude model for Skyrim) already has a working version for F4. Supposedly, releasing soon. I can only imagine the deluge of PMs he's getting from people trying to figure out how he's rigged it. If it's not that difficult, we could have model replacers way before the GECK gets released. That is assuming other skeletons, like those for the power armor, are rigged the same way. And/or if the skeletons can support it.

First comes the Tit perverts, then comes the slaughterhouse of outfits that satisfy the costume crowd and somewhere down the line emerges the animated prostitution so you can become a Sex Slave Pimp of the Fallout Wasteland. Now witness Fallout 4 allow the player to build drug dens and brothels.

It's telling that, IIRC, Animated Prostitution's creator was the first person to figure out how to add custom animations into Skyrim. Up until that point, the community said it was impossible. Replacers were the only way.

Just the ability to add body tattoos to ONE character was such a pain in the ass for years. Racemenu had support, but not like it did up until a few months ago. I had to run some guys custom tatoo system using MCM and it was not originally designed for anything like what I had in mind. But it worked, and other modders released more.... vanilla tatoos for it. Thankfully, I was able to remove it and it didn't have any dependencies anyway. After X years, I can finally open showracemenu and just click my way to an actual custom character. That's just kind of what you're in for with modding.

One only wonders if Bethseda is going to pull the paid - to - mod stunt again with the addition of releasing the GECK. I have seen defenders of the FO bullshit weapons and style as being a way to avoid paying to include real life equivelents. No surprise that as soon as the GECK gets released folks are going to be pushing and turning out exactly those kinds of mods. Beth could easily kill this game's longevity with a profit-mod system.

Well, it might be a bit too late at this point. If they were planning on a paid mod system, they really should have gone from the get-go. Nexus registrations skyrocketted after F4 was released. There's an even bigger number of people installing what few mods there are for F4 right now. If the modders keep hacking away without a GECK and release enough content before-hand to give the new guys a sense of what modding should be like: we'll see an even bigger backlash than what we saw with Skyrim.

[Enigma]

Hated Cait so I sent her to The Slog.

I find it irritating that every faction basically say the same things, especially regarding to the Institute. Can't they just have different dialogues? Can't the BOS' method in dealing with the Institute be different than the Railroad or the Minutemen? Why do they all have to blow it up? Why can it be that the BOS do the blowy uppy and the Minutemen re-purpose the Institute into their main settlement? Or the Railroad could just gut the place and leave it abandoned or something? Some variety would be nice.

Biggest pet peeve is the extreme disappointment with the ending cut scenes. That is not a FO ending. It is a generic piece of shit. I want to know what happens to the Minutemen, to Sanctuary Hills, Diamond City, Goodneighbors. Hell, I'd like to know what happens to my companions! GAHH!

5/10

[PREDATOR490]

I am equally disappointed at how utterly lazy the ending is. I was playing all sides until the end, used the Railroad to destroy BOS, Killed the Railroad for the Institute and then I gunned down some institute folks = game cuts to the endgame sequence and still cuts back to me being the head of the institute even as they are all shooting at me. I even got the 'Escape' mission up prior to the cutscene so for a fleeting moment I thought I Bethseda had actually put in a way to kill all three factions but seemingly not.

Now I end up being able to re-enter the Institute which will shoot me on sight with no way to really do anything about it because the Minute Men path that leads to the destruction of the Institute apparently wont trigger at this point.

As for finding out what happens to the rest of the FO - From the way the game plays the player has not really done that much to change the landscape. Even the factions themselves leave relatively few marks on the world to indicate they were actually around. A few extra craters at points and a couple of new generic NPCs at Diamond city are the only things I noticed that change. For a faction that supposedly brought up their biggest assets to the playing field and an army to follow, the BOS at the height of their operations sit happily bottled up so they can be taken out in one blow.

[TheFeniX]

Oh man, if you haven't modded Fallout, you just need to load one thing True Storms. FO4Edit hacks can be dangerous to your saves, just FYI. But seriously, this is what rain sounds like. Thunder, lightning, ah man. This had to be my favorite mod for Skyrim and I have it so early in the life of Fallout 4.

I broke the shit out of Skyrim updating Nexus Mod Manager. I didn't backup my game first, because I was drunk and dumb. Thankfully, I got it to the point my saves will load and I only have to hammer out my custom animations now. Now loading Nexus mods is just easy. Yes, I know NMM is "garbage" but I've had so few issues with it and I can easily compile my own mods to use it's system. I haven't had much luck with the other cutdown managers, and now NMM works for F4 after sticking with the pre-fuckupSkyrim version for a while.

I find it irritating that every faction basically say the same things, especially regarding to the Institute. Can't they just have different dialogues? Can't the BOS' method in dealing with the Institute be different than the Railroad or the Minutemen? Why do they all have to blow it up? Why can it be that the BOS do the blowy uppy and the Minutemen re-purpose the Institute into their main settlement? Or the Railroad could just gut the place and leave it abandoned or something? Some variety would be nice.

Beth loves explosions in their Fallout games. And Liberty Prime? I get the Capital Wasteland isn't that far from the Commonwealth, but talk about riding old coattails.

Biggest pet peeve is the extreme disappointment with the ending cut scenes. That is not a FO ending. It is a generic piece of shit. I want to know what happens to the Minutemen, to Sanctuary Hills, Diamond City, Goodneighbors. Hell, I'd like to know what happens to my companions! GAHH!

No fucking Ron Perlman. Let me repeat that: No. Fucking. Ron. Fucking. Perlman. The voice of Fallout. Even before Ron Perlman sounded like Ron Fucking Perlman, he was the voice of Fallout. I don't know if he didn't want to do it, but he is in the game.

Beth has made changes to the aesthetics of Fallout. Like, with the music: I think that was a great idea. Fallout has it's own theme now, not a licensed one. But no Ron Perlman? There are some things you do not mess with. This is one of them. Taylor just could not pull of anything redeeming with her recap of the game. At the least, Ron Perlman could do his "Ron Perlman thing" and we'd have that. I get it's a little thing and people are like "WTF is your problem?" But to me, as a guy who's played every numbered Fallout, it's like recasting Jones as the voice of Darth Vader, you should be clubbed for even thinking about it.

But I guess war changes sometimes.

[Gaidin]

Well, that didn't take long.

[TheFeniX]

FO4Edit hacks are in fact going bonkers, but mainly because the amount of content that's being released with 0 official modding tools. Niftools is being hammered into shape as well, but there's still the issue of getting models into the game, but most modders making progress are too busy working to bother explaining this stuff to lowly plebs. I've backed up my saves and have been modding in what I can when I have time to play. There's already so much QoL stuff out, I don't recall Skyrim having anywhere near this much traction. I was worried F4 would go the same route as Skyrim. Months of "Hey, check out this retex of the female body that adds weirdly placed nipples! Guys, GUYS: BOOBS!" There is that, but honestly it's making up like 10% of the content.

Though there have been some mesh hacks. Some guy booty and boobied up the default Vault Suit. Just messed with the mesh and was able to import it back in. CBBE is in some kind of alpha test. Read that there's major seams on the body and few of the outfits fit. Don't care, but I like the progress being made because that will transfer over into other areas.

Now, I didn't buy Skyrim right off the bat. The game itself seemed lack-luster. But another part was disappointment in the focus on getting nude bodies into the game and turning it into dress-up barbie. I'm a backstory guy myself, but I do love boobs. But I love real weather, difficulty overhauls, and weapons mods a whole lot more. F4 has the "adult" stuff going on, but there's also just loads of other guys working on different things. Maybe I'm not remembering this right, but Skyrim didn't have 1/10th the mod content F4 has in the same amount of time. I'm talking about mods worth posting, not "hey, I put a blue overlay on this outfit" or "I made minor changes to the default face, please download and GIVE ME UPVOTES!"

Guys were/are fixing major (at least to me) issue with the gameplay and environment itself. Sure, mostly batch file stuff at first, but at least I didn't have to type them out.

[Zixinus]

I have been playing Fallout 4 for some time now, haven't touched the main quest too much yet and I ended up being one of those people that say "Bethesda should have done with the universe what Obsidian did with the story".

At first I was happy to dive in. But now, after playing the game for about two weeks or more, I am at the point where I'm an unstoppable tank that can mow down everything in the way. So most of the challenge is gone but that's expectable when you reach high-level character.

I do like the crafting system and how it prioritizes the game, how it changes what becomes valuable. I am now legitimately collecting junk here and there for better mods. I like how the Power Armor feels like.

The settlement making was interesting at first but I lost a lot of interest after it turned out that you can only have less than 20 settlers in one location. Not to mention that managing settlers is a pain, you have to manually figure out who has what job and where. Trying to fortify spots is a pain, although I have not experimented with house designs very much yet.

My main problem is how the world is set up. Everything is stuck slightly rotting from since the bombs fell. Everyone looks and lives like a scavenger, everything is scavenged even new buildings and structures. With exceptions like maintained Vaults, everything is always dirty. Yet various locations I visit are in an untouched state with valuable items out in open sight, telling stories not of what happened during the two hundred years the character was hibernating but what happened before the bombs fell or during.

[Vendetta]

The settlement making was interesting at first but I lost a lot of interest after it turned out that you can only have less than 20 settlers in one location. Not to mention that managing settlers is a pain, you have to manually figure out who has what job and where. Trying to fortify spots is a pain, although I have not experimented with house designs very much yet.

Max settlers in each location is actually 10 + Charisma, including bonuses from gear.

That said, settlements are mostly useful as glue farms.


I agree with you about Bethesda's narrative priorities though, telling their little stories about how the end came to various pre-war environments or what was going on before the bombs fell supports their overall design intent which is to have independent vignettes which the player needs no context from the rest of the gameworld to understand so that no matter what order the player chooses to address the content in they get the same effect.

And sure, it makes it even more achingly dumb that this is allegedly 200 years after, but that's Bethesda for you.

[TheFeniX]

And sure, it makes it even more achingly dumb that this is allegedly 200 years after, but that's Bethesda for you.

Why are pre-war suits not worth thousands of caps?

You know, there's rich people in Diamond City? I didn't, because anyone with money would bail instantly. What do they even do to make money? Aw fuck it, who cares?

Ann Codman, who sits around the Taphouse all day, is "rich" because she wears a clean pre-war suit. She then talks down to someone as poor who has, at least in my example, 10s of thousands of caps and even more in equipment. Who also technically owns several large settlements. I mean, I CAN make settlers do about anything I want, even reassigning their homes at will. But Codman exists solely to talk shit to the player. There's nothing else going for her. Also, she lives in a rusted shit-hole 3 feet from said bar.

Hell, there's not even anything that shows the Colonial Taphouse is a bar worth drinking in for rich people. It's still a dirty hole, just with more lighting. Even Goodneighbor's bar is so far above it. Has live music, more seating, better atmosphere: and it's built in a fucking subway station. Why would rich people sit around a small bar drinking with 2 other people all day when there's nothing else going on?

That's my big dig at F3/4: there's no rhyme or reason to any aesthetic choices outside of "post-apo." Even Markaath had Nords repurposing old Dwemer ruins for their own use, and the designers did a pretty good job at "Nords move into the place and make it as Nordy as they can." Fallout is "we just moved into pre-war buildings, de-boned the clothes we found, and act like we got it going on." Violent morons can craft better furniture than a post-war society. Like, no one builds anything not covered in rust in the future? Did no carpenters survive the war and take on apprentices?

I like how the entrance to Diamond City is meant to showcase what they made. It is a baseball stadium after-all. You get this whole look at the city as you enter and it's supposed to cause awe. Megaton's design was the same way: the entrance is elevated and very little blocks your view to the bomb. Rivet City, to move the bridge, you get a cool shot of the whole carrier (then can't access 99% of it).

Diamond city was so fucking underwhelming in this regard to be laughable. "Hey look. I got an awesome shot of a bunch of junk. woot......" Not to mention the place would turn into a damn sludge pool with any amount of rain.

[biostem]

So I just finished the main storyline, (sided with the Railroad, but took my time and was level 74). I have to say, I was a bit annoyed that there wasn't any option to simply assume command of the Institute, but have them start treating the gen 3 synths like human beings, and allow those that want, to leave. Once they solved their energy problem, I see no reason why the Institute couldn't use gen 1's and 2's for the menial stuff, (do you really need a gen 3 to tend the grass or work a mine?), and simply socialize gen 3's with full disclosure about what the wasteland is like - if they want to leave at the end of their initial training, then so be it, if not, then you have fully-informed citizens who will be much better contributors to your cause.

I also would have liked it if I, as leader of the Minutemen, could simply setup a few synth-only settlements, in order to help them acclimate to life in the Commonwealth.

[Vendetta]

You're clearly talking about things that would require effort to go into worldbuilding and narrative. It's clear that very little of that was on the agenda at Bethesda.

The institute is stupid, their motivations are contradictory. Make a "better human" then enslave it at massively greater cost than the synths they already have? Nobody in the wasteland has done anything for 200 years, there are almost no actual settlements because they wanted the player built ones to do all the work, but those are super generic and don't do anything for you except produce glue (it sounds like Far Cry Primal has a better settlement building component!), and the narrative doesn't care whether you built them anyway. Almost all the quests are radiant bullshit "go to X and shoot everything" with no unique character (or characters), no ability to alter outcomes, and no sense that the outcome alters the world in any way (because they can be repeated infinitely).

I mean Fallout 4 is really just a very slow, less funny, less characterful version of Borderlands with less quests and less unique NPCs, and less motivation for its antagonists. Borderlands 2 is achingly dumb but at least you know what Handsome Jack wants and what he intends to do with it.

Bethesda are Ubisoft now, same super shallow world full of things to shoot.

[TheFeniX]

I read a post talking about how the latest Elder Scrolls game was a huge step back. It was being "casualized" to appeal to the masses. The emphasis was on "cutting edge" (FUCKING, HA!) graphics and the narrative was being left behind.

He was talking about Morrowind vs Daggerfall circa a 2002 or so bbs post.

But at least Morrowind moved away from 2D sprites to a 3D world that couldn't just be generated by some kid with a map editor. They brought the series into the 21st century. F4 is just a F3 expansion pack to bring the graphics up to... what... 2010? Could be nostalgia, but I don't see much better texture detail in F4 than Half-Life-Goddamn-2. Sure, more polys, whatever.

The biggest thing was porting the engine over to 64-bit. But they did that with Skyrim to test out working on the Xboner. They really had to add jack-shit with the engine.

I mean Fallout 4 is really just a very slow, less funny, less characterful version of Borderlands with less quests and less unique NPCs, and less motivation for its antagonists. Borderlands 2 is achingly dumb but at least you know what Handsome Jack wants and what he intends to do with it.

At least BLands has co-op.

Bethesda are Ubisoft now, same super shallow world full of things to shoot.

Let's be fair here: Fallout 3 was everything Fallout 4 was in the shortcomings department. But people were so starved for both another open-world RPG and a Fallout game: almost all of that was forgiven. And considering reviewers fucking love F4 and they made bank, we're going to see more (less) even though the gaming community registers a big meh. This is just what happens when people say shit like "New Vegas is too complicated." Or how reviewers beat it up for being pretty damn buggy, but gave Beth proper a pass on Fallout 3 and 4. But you're allowed to beat up on Obsidian because they can't crush you like Bethimax can.

Fallout 4 felt less in scope than Dragonborn. And at least Dragonborn had a villian you could hate. I don't knock points off F4 for not having a central villian as..... shit, merc guy who shoots your spouse doesn't really count. Holy shit... I refuse to google it. Did I care that little about the game? Harkness? No, that's Android guy from F3 or something. Whatever. He was so damned cliche and boring. Anyway, at least Miraak had some class and him and Hermaeus Mora had some good dialog. F4 is a joke. Likely wasted so much time trying to write for a voiced protag.

I can't even be bothered to load the game up anymore. I'd rather load old Skyrim saves. We're still a month or so away from the CK (Beth is releasing it after their first DLC), but even all the QOL mods that fix most of the bullshit still don't fix a boring shallow game. I guess I could mod tits in, but what's the fucking point?

[Joun_Lord]

I don't knock points off F4 for not having a central villian

I actually liked that. I liked the fact there wasn't one big bad person who was the designated villain. Any faction heads you can't really call a villain even if their methods might be extreme. Probably the closest thing to a villain was Father and even his reasons for fucking with the wasteland were less to do with villainy then just straight up not giving a care.

It made the decision who to support harder when you don't have a clear hero or villain. All the factions have their own positives and minuses, all in their own way are trying to make the world a better place.

To go after some other points, there isn't much Fallout 4 can do that really improves it compared to Fallout 3. There is no new technology or anything that can used like the difference between F1&2 to F3 or Daggerfall to Morrowind. Pretty much some graphics improvements and a few game play improvements. Anything too different risks moving too far away from the core concept that made Fallout 3 and New Vegas such hits.

And the graphics were most certainly improved substantially. I don't know what you are running the game on but it looks far more amazing then its predecessor and HL2 and I'm only running it on medium graphics. I'm playing through Fallout 3, when its not crashing, on ultra right now and the level of difference is considerable. Models look better, the environment looks better, little improvements like fans spinning and ground that doesn't look so bare.

Speaking of crashes, the game is substantially more stable then F3 or New Vegas ever was. I've probably put over 200 hours in the game and modded it and I've had very few crashes. Maybe two hard crashes in game and a few freeze-ups on start up but certainly nothing like F3 and NV where you had to save every few minutes or anytime you entered a building. New Vegas is fairly stable now but F3 still is buggy as fuck.

Yes Fallout 4 is pretty much an improved version of Fallout 3. But thats what fans wanted. They didn't want some whizbang new game that broke the mold, they wanted more of the same with some improvements in mechanics and combat and graphics. They dropped the ball in some places (the non-existent ammo system and the sheer lack of weapons being some gripes of mine) but mostly gave people what they wanted.

There is plenty of room for improvement and hopefully we get that in another Obsidian Fallout game like New Vegas (or maybe a collaboration, Beth does the environments and Ob does the writing) but certainly its not a bad game. It just couldn't live up to the hype.

Now I'll admit I'm a fan of the game and perhaps I am giving some of the flaws a pass but honestly I've not seen any flaw that really breaks the experience for me.

Maybe Preston Garvey.

No Preston I don't want to help Greygarden, I got shit to do.

[LastShadow]

Fallout 4 is my first Fallout game, i liked it for the most part, Preston Garvey annoyed the hell out of me, i really enjoyed the settlement building for the most part.

I think they could have gone further and opened up more for the ballistic weave, i really would have like to have a highly armored radiation suit, that would have been cool.

Though the game got really stale fast after i found an explosive shotgun and maxed my rifle stats and stuff, i just murdered pretty much anything in my path.

Honestly i preffered skyrim and hope another one like that comes out, i spent many hours in that sneaking around with my bow, picking fights with giants,

[TheFeniX]

To go after some other points, there isn't much Fallout 4 can do that really improves it compared to Fallout 3. There is no new technology or anything that can used like the difference between F1&2 to F3 or Daggerfall to Morrowind. Pretty much some graphics improvements and a few game play improvements. Anything too different risks moving too far away from the core concept that made Fallout 3 and New Vegas such hits.

They cut content in F4 versus F3. No weapon/armor crafting. The modding system is bare-bones, fixed with mods, but we're talking vanilla. The whole system seems to be designed around the MMO (or Hell, even Blands) gear treadmill as you farm legendary enemies for the right armor, class, and mod to not be completely garbage.

You can't even specialize due to the level requirements on perks. Like, in F3 I can just dump points into lockpicking (or whatever) off the bat and become Houdini in a few levels. Not in F4. You'll be taking perks for shit you don't want because you have nothing else to use levels for.

I could go on, but F4 is loved by people who think New Vegas was bad because you had so many options they were overwhelmed. Basically, people who are just so used to a fucking waypoint to every little thing, not having that annoys them.

And the graphics were most certainly improved substantially. I don't know what you are running the game on but it looks far more amazing then its predecessor and HL2 and I'm only running it on medium graphics. I'm playing through Fallout 3, when its not crashing, on ultra right now and the level of difference is considerable. Models look better, the environment looks better, little improvements like fans spinning and ground that doesn't look so bare.

2K, ultra everything but Godrays and SSAO (I think). I'd run 4K, but F4 has SLI issues and I haven't bothered to check to see if they've been corrected.

Fallout 4 is not graphically impressive for 2015. No Beth game has ever been for a given year. Skyrim was close: it didn't look like garbage, but their static meshes were/are terrible. Even Daggerfall didn't have shit on other developer sprite work. Even the world space was bad. The texture space was so small it looked like a clone stamp nightmare. Eye of the Beholder's assets were better. Wizardry, even more. And Eye of the Beholder could even do a better job faking a 3D worldspace and it predates Daggerfall by years. Daggerfall was some Duke Nukem 3D levels of flat.

And this is coming from a guy who has enjoyed, in varying degrees, every Elder Scrolls game he's played.

Speaking of crashes, the game is substantially more stable then F3 or New Vegas ever was.

I don't think Beth is capable of making a game that isn't a crash-happy shit-heap of code. A lot is probably still tied to their shitty scripting language and a dated engine, even if it was ported over to 64-bit. That said, "this game doesn't crash much" should never be counted as a +. Just the crashes I had on the 360 version of F3 is likely greater than every other game combined: Sans other Beth games, bad hardware on my end, or overclocking too much.

Yes Fallout 4 is pretty much an improved version of Fallout 3. But thats what fans wanted. They didn't want some whizbang new game that broke the mold, they wanted more of the same with some improvements in mechanics and combat and graphics. They dropped the ball in some places (the non-existent ammo system and the sheer lack of weapons being some gripes of mine) but mostly gave people what they wanted.

Which totally explains it's user metacritic score of 5.4 versus review sites gushing over it and Beth pushing pre-orders like all other big publishers do.

Fuck man, people want more CoD and that series hasn't been worth a shit since MW2. Just because something is popular doesn't make it a good example for a given media. Look at reality television or Big Bang Theory. Original Fallout fans are likely behind the few bad reviews of F3, but F4 is legitimately a disappointing game.

There is plenty of room for improvement and hopefully we get that in another Obsidian Fallout game like New Vegas (or maybe a collaboration, Beth does the environments and Ob does the writing) but certainly its not a bad game. It just couldn't live up to the hype.

Obsidian missed the magical score on metacritic and lost out on their bonus for New Vegas (I think they needed an 85). So Obsidian likely won't be working with Beth again.

Hilariously, Beth couldn't beat NV's score with F4.

Now I'll admit I'm a fan of the game and perhaps I am giving some of the flaws a pass but honestly I've not seen any flaw that really breaks the experience for me.

There's nothing to "break." The game is just massively underwhelming. And the lack of weapon diversity, vs even F3, makes even the over-the-top gore bland after a while. And the combat system is the only real selling point.

[biostem]

I suppose my main point is that the Institute, when you strip off all the excess stuff, is basically like Star Trek's Federation - they have all this cool high tech stuff, but seem dead-set on *not* using it in clever ways - stop freaking putting Gen3 synths on gardening duty, (use the non-sentient Gen1's for that), send a few Courser's topside as mercs, establish a settlement or 2, start some trade for resources you need, and use the molecular relay + Gen1 and 2's, led by Coursers, to take out the actual "bad" raiders and make yourself a hero.

As another poster mentioned, the settlement system, (while I enjoy it), doesn't actually help you out all that much - even once you setup trade routes, you'll still be struggling for resources, and items like the various stores that you can set up generate pitiful amounts of income vs their cost, and you're still being called upon to do the menial tasks. I'd love to be able to use my "General of the Minutemen" status to dispatch teams to quell such issues, and have the defenses I setup actually play a role in the random "rescue a kidnap victim" scenarios.

[Vendetta]

Now I'll admit I'm a fan of the game and perhaps I am giving some of the flaws a pass but honestly I've not seen any flaw that really breaks the experience for me.

There's nothing to "break." The game is just massively underwhelming. And the lack of weapon diversity, vs even F3, makes even the over-the-top gore bland after a while. And the combat system is the only real selling point.

The weapon balance is even worse than ever in this one, because of the way the armour system works there's no reason to use anything but the gun with the biggest number you can get (because armour effectiveness is based on the ratio between the damage number and the armour number, the bigger the number on your gun the less of it will be stopped by armour), automatic weapons are pointless unless they have bleed attached, and Instigating and Two Shot are so much better than all other legendary affixes that there's no variety there either.

Stealth is even more broken than ever with enemies unable to see you even if they're standing right next to you as long as you're in a shadow, even if it's the shadow of a tree in broad daylight, and you can still get sneak attacks whilst enemies are in Caution state so you can relatively trivially be doing 500% damage at all times forever and easily one shot almost every enemy even on the hardest difficulty.

So even with the combat mechanics being the only real engagement in the game, they're not very good. With less variety and less viable options than almost any other shooter.

They stripped out the roleplaying, took out all the quests, and left a really rather insipid shooting experience in its place.

[TheFeniX]

The weapon balance is even worse than ever in this one, because of the way the armour system works there's no reason to use anything but the gun with the biggest number you can get (because armour effectiveness is based on the ratio between the damage number and the armour number, the bigger the number on your gun the less of it will be stopped by armour), automatic weapons are pointless unless they have bleed attached, and Instigating and Two Shot are so much better than all other legendary affixes that there's no variety there either.

No argument there. Considering the tech base of different factions, they could have made energy and ballistic resistances actually mean something. Maybe even added a few more damage types. Force the player to pick and choose what armor and damage type to bring to certain missions. The problem likely stems from the idea that, after you get a few levels, everything has to be beatable at any given point in time. You're basically meat for the grinder until you get a few perks and some decent gear, then you are basically expected to be able to fight and stim your way through anything.

That's an effect I don't know where the cause is. Are current gamers just that lazy? Or have they been trained to expect that because developers found it's easier to create fewer types and have been going with that for.... well, a long time now. I'm sure there's room in this thought for another round of "our inventory management is so horrible due to catering to controllers you really do want just one set of armor and 2-3 weapons."

They stripped out the roleplaying, took out all the quests, and left a really rather insipid shooting experience in its place.

We were joking the other night that after a few more FallScrolls games, you're basically going to be playing a really buggy corridor shooter. I honestly didn't think Beth could chop Skyrim down more, but they did and shunted all that money saved into a top-notch marketing campaign. At this point, I'm much more interested to see just how much more they can chop out of the RPG parts while added half-implemented ideas from Steam early access games. The settlement system really looks stupid when you think about, no matter how ugly it was, how Las Vegas was re-purposed in New Vegas and all you can build are some steel shacks with magical turrets.

Anyways, I found the DLC schedule. Season pass will be $60 unless you already bought it. The big one is $25. It's "biggest landmass added to a DLC" or whatever. Point Lookout was big... and mostly empty.

With the Wasteland Workshop, design and set cages to capture live creatures – from raiders to Deathclaws! Tame them or have them face off in battle, even against your fellow settlers. The Wasteland Workshop also includes a suite of new design options for your settlements like nixie tube lighting, letter kits, taxidermy and more!

They stole my fucking idea.

And something that we’re really excited about, a complete overhaul of Survival Mode that changes how you play the whole game: food, sleep, diseases, danger and more.

So... not a joke compared to New Vegas? I need to get my survival mods working for Skyrim again.

[biostem]

This game has eaten up so much of my time lately. I "beat" the main storyline a short while ago, (said character was approx level 74, but the game continues afterward, and there's still new quests given out), but I'm now playing a melee/stealth build.

Not upping my charisma and doing without local leader and trade routes has made for a much different experience - I can't build crafting stations wherever I wish, so I'm making many trips to and from Sanctuary. I can't just work with whatever settlement I happen to be at, but having fewer settlers at each location is a little easier to manage, (the maximum number of settlers at each location is 1 + cha rating).

I'm not using any 3rd party mods, but have been following several of them on youtube - there are some amazingly talented people out there!

I really wish they'd add some sort of field-kit for weapons and armor, where you could rip out mods without needing a station...

[TheFeniX]

Got bored and loading this thing up again. Tried to once again play a dude. Once again, failed miserably. Just went mod happy instead.

The new patch seems to have added some major performance benefits as I've just had the time to test it out. Running 4K texture improvement mods, I can now maintain a fairly consistent 60 FPS at 2K. This drops into the mid 40s during large engagements. At 4K, it hovers around 30-40FPS, but with very little drop during engagements... which is weird. Game manages to look pretty damn good at 4K though. Beth stock textured really are just terrible.

Been messing with some AI and gameplay overhaul mods. They seem to not play all that well with a current game. I wanted limb crippling to force me to get to a doctor (and other such stuff) because the default of being healed with a stimpack or waiting 30 seconds was dumb. I don't want every bullet to be deadly, because that just gets boring, but I want a stacking effect when I get shot or smacked. Like, do I push further with a broken arm or concussion? Or do I bug out and go get patched up? That, not "enemies hit me for 10000000000000 more damage, hit F9 a bunch of times."

I spent more than a few hours running around naked with .308 Combat Rifle on Survival difficulty trying to make the game actually difficult. But unless I charge in like a moron, it's just not an issue. The game still throws stims at you and I can still take 2-3 bullets and have time to react. Unless a guy rounds the corner with a shotgun, it's just not an issue. And it's becoming increasingly apparent this is mainly because, even with the Gunners and Brotherhood, the AI doesn't fight as a team. There is another AI overhaul that's supposed to help fix this, but I've only just downloaded it.

So, fuck it: dress up barbie time. I wanted to find a set of armor that meshed with my character. I'm probably going Insdatoot again because it gives you access to a sweet setup that doesn't look like shit. I settled on the Courser X-92 Power Suit. Looks cool, if not a little cleavage-tastic. This version relies on CBBE. Thankfully, there's a unique player mod that works, so my NPCs are left unaffected. Looks pretty damn good, if not insanely overpowered. I like it so much, I retexed the orange to dark purple (had a thing for purple lately, no idea why).

All the weapon mods I've found are for mostly automatic stuff. Need a good combat rifle, semi-auto, since that's how my character is setup. Energy weapons are annoying since they aren't silenced. I want a new Combat Rifle that doesn't look like shit because goddamn Beth makes ugly weapons. That, or a new .50 cal sniper rifle.

Still no word on the GECK release that I've seen. And the good news is I care so little about fucking up my game I'll load any mod without fear of breaking my install.

[TheFeniX]

AutoMatron has been released. You get robots and about 1-2 hours of content for $10. Or you could wait for the GECK and just see if RobCo Certified is ported to F4. Would probably be less buggy if it was. I get "The Mechanist" is linked to Silver Shroud, but I already dealt with this person in F3 (even though it's not the same person): Fallout 4 continues to just retread F3 content. But at least the Antagonizer and Mechanist questline was fun, if not idiotic. Oh yea, but Fallout 4 adds MORE RADIANT QUESTS! WOO HOO!

What's next, finding out the Children of the Atom went from nut-jobs worshiping a bomb to freakish radiation vampires living in deadly irradiated areas somh.... fuck.

I love Steam reviews: "If your looking for something to compare this DLC to it is similar to Skyrim's Hearthfire DLC. With that said buy this for the same reason - not for the quests but for the new features. In my opinion it is worth the current price tag."

Building a house and adopting kids is comparable to fighting and building robot companions. I'm sure every Dragonborn was like "After beating Alduin and wrecking vampire ass, you know what's missing in my life? Annoying kids!" Hearthfire should have been a free update considering it adds houses where player houses should have been anyways. And adopting kids, I'm not paying $5 for Beth to add a few lines of dialog and move some NPC sandbox pathing.

Steam reviews never disappoint.

[TheFeniX]

Still no GECK and Wasteland Workshop just dropped. From reading about what content it offers: pretty pathetic, even for a $5 DLC. How much was the season pass for this game $30? Holy shit, it's $50? Fucking WOW. What the Hell is wrong with people? Anyway, WW is getting beat up pretty heavy in the Steam reviews. It's basically a content patch and could have easily been made had the community had some sort of modding tool that was promised before the second DLC, but GEE I WONDER WHY THEY PUT IT OFF. Considering how shallow the vanilla settlement system was, this had no business being a paid mod. I say paid mod because there's nothing offered some 14-year-old couldn't bang out with the CK.... provided they weren't busy making new stripper outfits (that said, the Deathclaw Armor does look cool, but also like it belongs in Skyrim).

Best Steam review so far: "Horse Armor DLC: Wasteland Redux."

And from what I know, the "traps" you build don't actually trap anything. They just spawn whatever mob tag you gave the box after X hours. QUALITY!

[Lagmonster]

If I liked money, I wouldn't release feasible modding tools before I'd released all or most of my DLC, or made a certain quota of Season Pass sales.

For reasons that should probably be obvious as fuck - mods cut sharply into those profits. The cost to make a game like Fallout 4 probably exceeds the stagnant prices we still are fortunate enough to pay, so releasing normal game content as DLC for $15 bucks a pop is a clever way to get a reasonable (to stakeholders) profit without blatantly pissing off all the fickle suburbia dwellers out there who will rage against the rising costs of living if it dares reach into their pockets.

[TheFeniX]

If I liked money, I wouldn't release feasible modding tools before I'd released all or most of my DLC, or made a certain quota of Season Pass sales.

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand this mentality. But releasing mod level content, even for a nominal fee and at the same time going back on your promised release schedule is my problem.

For reasons that should probably be obvious as fuck - mods cut sharply into those profits. The cost to make a game like Fallout 4 probably exceeds the stagnant prices we still are fortunate enough to pay, so releasing normal game content as DLC for $15 bucks a pop is a clever way to get a reasonable (to stakeholders) profit without blatantly pissing off all the fickle suburbia dwellers out there who will rage against the rising costs of living if it dares reach into their pockets.

Modders aren't going to make Broken Steel, Dawnguard, Dragonborn or Shivering Isles. The voice acting alone puts it outside their scope. Skyrim ran about $90 million and how much of that was marketing? Fallout 4 would cost how much realistically? $150 million?

Man, those cost of living increases must hurt when Beth made $750 million in launch sales. A lot of that was probably also attributed to season pass monies, which is being eaten up by mod-level DLC. Publishers are spending more money (almost always in the marketing department) because they are expecting to MAKE more money. It has nothing to do with cost of living increases.

Also, please provide evidence that mods cut sharply into profits. The only profits it cuts into is if you're charging money for what some kid could bang out on his mom's Dell.