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

[Jub]

The average person isn't building on that crap unless it's mostly a lean-to. And unless they're just kind of living in what's already there and boarding over what's already there.

That hasn't been true for any of human history. People will always build the best house they can with the resources they have access too. This might mean putting in the work required to fell trees and cut them into planks or it might involve hiring a skilled craftsman to install a new central air conditioner.

In Fallout, that means we should see better than we're getting. Even if they wanted to go lazy and low tech in terms of what people have the skills to build, you'd be better off with a dugout than an above ground shack. It offers more shelter, better protection against heat and cold, and is easily defended with only one way in.

Is most of suburbia around Boston? Or did they break off their own timeline in the 50s? I honestly can't tell you how much they winged on their own there and how much might have been...similar.

Are you arguing here without having even played the game? If you look at the game world there's a lot of open unpaved space between anything built up.

The fact of the matter is, there never has been according to you. Most of them should have every building you're in falling down around you if you want to name a number like 30. That's fine. But lets look at the Fallout setting. Fallout took place 84 years after the war. Fallout 2 took place 164 years after the war. Fallout 3 took place 200 years after the war. Fallout: New Vegas took place 204 years after the war. Fallout 4 is taking place 210 years after the war.

One question: Now we bitch? After looking the other way for so long? Nah. I liked the setting for the others. I've got no reason not to like this one unless I either A) just don't like Boston(which I'm loving) or B) feel like being a hypocrite. As a programmer/EE who has to put up with movies and TV shows bullshitting my profession all the fucking time...suspension of disbelief is a...unique talent. I'll live. Why? Because fun.

I've never played the older games, but I didn't like the world building of 3 very much at all. NV, was a step in the right dirrection, but was hamstrung by having to exist in the same poorly built framework that 3 existed in. 4 is worse than NV, but a step above 3, but I can't praise that given how bad 3 was and the fact that NV was still better than our best Bethesda offering.

[Gaidin]

That hasn't been true for any of human history. People will always build the best house they can with the resources they have access too. This might mean putting in the work required to fell trees and cut them into planks or it might involve hiring a skilled craftsman to install a new central air conditioner.

In Fallout, that means we should see better than we're getting. Even if they wanted to go lazy and low tech in terms of what people have the skills to build, you'd be better off with a dugout than an above ground shack. It offers more shelter, better protection against heat and cold, and is easily defended with only one way in.

Yes, and they've managed to once they've gotten outside into that area that isn't developed. Where they can develop it themselves. Where you find the farms. Where you find the shacks, small and large, small technology. As opposed to the towns and cities.

Are you arguing here without having even played the game? If you look at the game world there's a lot of open unpaved space between anything built up.

No, I'm saying this knowing that most of suburbia has the kind of buildings you want while Boston proper and other major towns have the buildings you're bitching about.

[Vendetta]

Yes, and they've managed to once they've gotten outside into that area that isn't developed. Where they can develop it themselves. Where you find the farms. Where you find the shacks, small and large, small technology. As opposed to the towns and cities.

Trouble is that the shacks out in the commonwealth are far crapper than they should be.

Abernathy Farm, for instance, is a ramshackle half built shack barely hanging together with holes in the roof and walls.

People could do better than that with nothing but manual effort two hundred years ago, let alone two hundred years from now, war or no war.

[Jub]

Yes, and they've managed to once they've gotten outside into that area that isn't developed. Where they can develop it themselves. Where you find the farms. Where you find the shacks, small and large, small technology. As opposed to the towns and cities.

Yes, but the shacks shouldn't be shacks after 200 years of living in the wastelands. They should be proper houses with electricity, electric lights, and appliances. I say this because the tooling exists to make generators, the fuel exists to run them, and your main character can craft items like television sets, flood lights, radio equipment, and computer terminals from scrap. How can you argue that the world shouldn't look better than it does if some random asshole from a vault, with by default no technical skills to speak of, can make advanced technology after spending a week or two in the wastes?

No, I'm saying this knowing that most of suburbia has the kind of buildings you want while Boston proper and other major towns have the buildings you're bitching about.

Show me a settlement that has buildings constructed post-fall of at least the quality of a well-built log cabin. All of the places I've seen are shitholes that the citizens of favelas would mock for being a shitty place to live.

[bilateralrope]

One question: Now we bitch? After looking the other way for so long?

These complaints are not new to Fallout 4. I remember the same complaints showing up for Fallout 3. As for Fallout 1 and 2, I wasn't paying much attention to them. So I don't know if people were complaining about it then or not.

[Vendetta]

Also, Fallout 3 had much stupider things to complain about.

[Gaidin]

Show me a settlement that has buildings constructed post-fall of at least the quality of a well-built log cabin. All of the places I've seen are shitholes that the citizens of favelas would mock for being a shitty place to live.

I can't find the forest we get that from. Honestly. While we're talking, you know, numbers. 30 years, etc. Maybe termites. Should they not have grown outrageously. I'll assume not as trees *are* still standing. Admittedly with the shit I've been dealing with I've only gotten to play up to level ten and only done a crap load of Minutemen quests and gotten to Fenway Park, do point me in a direction on a map that has a consistent number of trees still standing these guys could've gotten to without getting killed, harvest, drag back, and then make into a house. That makes one house. For one person. Might make an interesting set of feuds between farmers to settle down as you're trying to do Minutemen quests on top of it.

Now admittedly I do run into the invisible wall if I go in the wrong direction so they could've headed away from Boston for this. But the areas seem rather thinned out and not something you want to make a wall out of unless you can process the thin trees into some sort of flat board. Though that might be a price of level design and us having to walk through this crap.

I don't know. My issue is I don't know how to do level design and make gaming happy and also make realism happy. Level design shoots to make playability fun, and taking the gimmick of the game and putting it out there. Unless the playability and gimmick is the engine's realism. There are a few games like this but they're pretty rare, rare enough I can't name one off the top of my head. I know how to do level design and make gaming happy. For a world like this they've set up the extremes and put them out there between the cities and the farmshacks. I don't really take issue with that. It's hardly the first world I've seen it done in, though in other worlds its not post-apocalyptic, more fantasy, and they get to say 'because I said so' and you don't get to bitch. Why? Because they want a level like this, a level like this, a level as such, and so on. No more reason. Was still fun.

So what, Fallout 3 is apparently where the property transferred companies and they started having fun with the environments of post-apocalyptic cities but we expected programmers to uhh...know this shit instead of make what 95% of gamers expect to be a fun environment. I...can't process that. Now, I can understand those complaints. But no game programming team is really going to see that. Not especially ten years after Fallout 2. They're, as a business, not sure what the old players are doing, and are more hopeful of pulling in more new players than anything. That's mostly how they got me and I went back and dabbled. I certainly wasn't writing comparison articles between the two generations of Fallout. (That was an interesting read, by the way, thanks Vendetta) But how do we expect a game design team to catch this level of technicality, where the goal is design a level the vast majority of players will like for the system. At this point it seems more the issue is they've got 5 small parallel storylines instead of your traditional grand quest with a bunch of small sidequests as the strangest game organization I've ever seen. But...we'll see.

If it's a game breaker for you, whatever. It's a game breaker. As I said before, not really for me.

[TheFeniX]

Also, Fallout 3 had much stupider things to complain about.

Man, I remember just how terrible Fallout 3 writing was, but I also remember it just being so God damned fun. Are we really so starved for open-world RPGs that's enough for us? Guess so. All the charm of F4 rests with the gameplay, which I really enjoy. But the characters themselves get mauled by games like Saint's Row 3 and 4 because Volition can make even brutal murdere... er, puckish rogues relatable.

I don't know. My issue is I don't know how to do level design and make gaming happy and also make realism happy. Level design shoots to make playability fun, and taking the gimmick of the game and putting it out there.

I do remediation work in abandoned refineries and terminals. If trees and crops will grow in the Commonwealth, it would be an overgrown forest by now. Without people mowing, grass would be waist high at a minimum, except in areas with a lot of tree coverage, then you'd be dodging branches and there'd be no clear path anywhere. It would not be a fun environment to play a game in.

Oh yea, and thieves literally steal anything not nailed down and will steal anything remotely of value even if it is nailed down. After 200 years, there would be literally nothing of value left to loot. Power also wouldn't be an issue for a while considering how many nuke-battery-powered cars are just sitting around. I accept that Beth wants to make a world you can do things in though.

But I do not understand how farmers who can build two-story "houses" out of wood cannot also patch the gaps in said wood when the material to do so is easily available. Protecting yourself from the elements should be a top priority. I do not understand why Diamond City wastes tons of paint on the stadium, but is content to let everything else look like rusted garbage.

Compare any Beth city to Vault City and it becomes apparent Beth just like's the "look" of what they think the Fallout-verse should be like. Notice how the rich areas and clean and paved and how the shit areas are ramshackle and dirt roads? That's an aesthetic with some thought put into it. In F4, the Institute and one vault are the only places that give me any kind of break in the aesthetic to let me know I'm in another place. That's a problem.

Does it not bother you that there is only one settlement of note in F4? Diamond City? Goodneighbor barely counts as they have no access to food or water. Man, at least the Skyrim art department gave us cities that had their own distinct look, even if they were way too small to do anything with.

[Jub]

I can't find the forest we get that from.

I said at least as well built as, the structure could be a dugout, a soddy, or some other form of less material intensive shelters so long as it is well built.

do point me in a direction on a map that has a consistent number of trees still standing these guys could've gotten to without getting killed, harvest, drag back, and then make into a house. That makes one house. For one person. Might make an interesting set of feuds between farmers to settle down as you're trying to do Minutemen quests on top of it.

Most "forests" in the game have dozens of trees, not enough to build a large community of frontier style houses, but more than enough to allow for the building of a large longhouse style dugout. Given that the game also features at least one quarry, a full functional foundry, and a faction that has built an airship I doubt materials to build solid housing from is the biggest issue. As for gathering supplies in safety, my lone unarmed settler running a supply route between the castle and sanctuary has never once been bothered, so the wasteland can't be that dangerous.

Now admittedly I do run into the invisible wall if I go in the wrong direction so they could've headed away from Boston for this. But the areas seem rather thinned out and not something you want to make a wall out of unless you can process the thin trees into some sort of flat board. Though that might be a price of level design and us having to walk through this crap.

I don't know. My issue is I don't know how to do level design and make gaming happy and also make realism happy. Level design shoots to make playability fun, and taking the gimmick of the game and putting it out there. Unless the playability and gimmick is the engine's realism. There are a few games like this but they're pretty rare, rare enough I can't name one off the top of my head. I know how to do level design and make gaming happy. For a world like this they've set up the extremes and put them out there between the cities and the farmshacks. I don't really take issue with that. It's hardly the first world I've seen it done in, though in other worlds its not post-apocalyptic, more fantasy, and they get to say 'because I said so' and you don't get to bitch. Why? Because they want a level like this, a level like this, a level as such, and so on. No more reason. Was still fun.

It would be very easy for the Fallout Devs to do a little thinking and create a far more realistic post-post-apocalyptic setting. If they wanted the same look, they should have set their games closer to the fall, maybe 10 or so years, leaving Fallout 2 as the latest game in the series chronologically.

So what, Fallout 3 is apparently where the property transferred companies and they started having fun with the environments of post-apocalyptic cities but we expected programmers to uhh...know this shit instead of make what 95% of gamers expect to be a fun environment. I...can't process that. Now, I can understand those complaints. But no game programming team is really going to see that. Not especially ten years after Fallout 2. They're, as a business, not sure what the old players are doing, and are more hopeful of pulling in more new players than anything. That's mostly how they got me and I went back and dabbled. I certainly wasn't writing comparison articles between the two generations of Fallout. (That was an interesting read, by the way, thanks Vendetta) But how do we expect a game design team to catch this level of technicality, where the goal is design a level the vast majority of players will like for the system. At this point it seems more the issue is they've got 5 small parallel storylines instead of your traditional grand quest with a bunch of small sidequests as the strangest game organization I've ever seen. But...we'll see.

If it's a game breaker for you, whatever. It's a game breaker. As I said before, not really for me.

It would have taken the team all of an hour of web searches to realize that the look and gameplay they want is best done far closer to the fall. Story wise, they might not have the completely bonkers vault societies in full swing yet, but you could still write interesting stories set closer to the bombs.

[Gandalf]

The economics of this game are wonderful. A few days ago I dropped/scrapped all but a few of my weapons and armour, placing the raw materials in the Castle workshop. I then went to each town with my power armour (for extra lifting) and got the raw resources from their workshops, placing them in the Castle workshop. Now every hour of gameplay time, I do a round of the towns, building things as needed with resources from the central resource stockpile. Since I was an idiot and put one point into charisma at the start, I'm just past level 20 and only now putting stores in my towns. Now resources and caps are being generated at unprecedented levels, creating an overfulfillment of the Three Hour Plan.

The downside of course is that with the exception of ammo, there's really not much to buy.

[Jub]

The economics of this game are wonderful. A few days ago I dropped/scrapped all but a few of my weapons and armour, placing the raw materials in the Castle workshop. I then went to each town with my power armour (for extra lifting) and got the raw resources from their workshops, placing them in the Castle workshop. Now every hour of gameplay time, I do a round of the towns, building things as needed with resources from the central resource stockpile. Since I was an idiot and put one point into charisma at the start, I'm just past level 20 and only now putting stores in my towns. Now resources and caps are being generated at unprecedented levels, creating an overfulfillment of the Three Hour Plan.

The downside of course is that with the exception of ammo, there's really not much to buy.

You can buy unique weapons from certain vendors, but most of them aren't anything special enough to be worth between 10 and 20k caps.

I wish you could craft weapons and armor yourself from scrap as well. It doesn't make sense that the sole survivor can craft a new upper receiver, barrel, stock, muzzle, sights, and magazine, swap them into a new weapon, but can't go one step further and make a lower receiver and trigger assembly to make an entirely new gun. The same goes for armor, ammunition, clothing, etc. It also goes for the various walls, platforms, and other greebles you see in the game world, but can't place in your settlements.

Given what you character can build, the things you can't craft seem absurd.

[Gaidin]

What is it with this game and giving me quests in areas like 15 threat levels above me...

[Vendetta]

Level scaling works differently now, zones are bounded so that they have a minimum and maximum level for scaling. So if a quest is in a higher level zone you can end up fighting higher level enemies.

Fortunately, cheesy stealth sniper tactics remain effective.

[Agent Fisher]

Settler: "Oh help, Minutemen! My friend was kidnapped?"

Me: "Slow down, what do you need?"

Settler: "My friend was taken! I asked for help from the Minutemen, but I wasn't sure they'd come!"

Me:

She was in Sanctuary Hills... standing in my Power Armor Warehouse that has a Minutemen, USA and Brotherhood flag next to the door... Working on my set of T-45f power armor, painted in Minutemen livery... With a Minutemen Flag right next to the Power Armor Workstation...

Me: Bitch, you live in the second most heavily defended Minutemen outpost, with fucking Preston just chilling on a guard tower. How did you not think the Minutemen wouldn't have heard you?

[Jub]

Settler: "Oh help, Minutemen! My friend was kidnapped?"

Me: "Slow down, what do you need?"

Settler: "My friend was taken! I asked for help from the Minutemen, but I wasn't sure they'd come!"

Me:

She was in Sanctuary Hills... standing in my Power Armor Warehouse that has a Minutemen, USA and Brotherhood flag next to the door... Working on my set of T-45f power armor, painted in Minutemen livery... With a Minutemen Flag right next to the Power Armor Workstation...

Me: Bitch, you live in the second most heavily defended Minutemen outpost, with fucking Preston just chilling on a guard tower. How did you not think the Minutemen wouldn't have heard you?

That's one of the better examples of just how lifeless the game is, and it's an easy fix. You could just set some flags that change dialogue if certain conditions are met. I might set them up as follows:

'If player has access to the Castle as a settlement set dialogue flag to 1'
'If Preston is in settlement set dialogue flag to 2'
'If player has failed x number of settlement quests set dialogue flag to 3'

With a few flags and a couple of extra lines of dialogue recorded you could make the NPCs seem far more alive.

It would also be nice to see NPC's banter in camp. If you leave certain combinations of NPCs around maybe they even start a conversation with you that gives a chance to build relationships with them more organically than 'drink x units of beer' or 'pick y number of locks'. Better still would be having two followers with you at any given time bantering back and forth; it's part of what makes Bioware games feel more alive.

[TheFeniX]

Me: Bitch, you live in the second most heavily defended Minutemen outpost, with fucking Preston just chilling on a guard tower. How did you not think the Minutemen wouldn't have heard you?

Welcome to the failure that is radiant questing. Preston just pulls from a list of eligible settlers, who then pull from a list of locations, spawns mobs there, and gives you a quest marker. All those quests are randomly generated, but at least the Yarl's men didn't drop them off.

It would also be nice to see NPC's banter in camp. If you leave certain combinations of NPCs around maybe they even start a conversation with you that gives a chance to build relationships with them more organically than 'drink x units of beer' or 'pick y number of locks'. Better still would be having two followers with you at any given time bantering back and forth; it's part of what makes Bioware games feel more alive.

Complainers shot themselves in the foot. The "mudcrabs, filthy creatures" dialog from Oblivion became kind of a running joke for NPC banter. Same thing with the 3-way (not the good kind) of two women and one man in Skyrim:

"Hello, ladies, need a big strong man around?"
"I'll let you know if I see any."
::laughter::
"Harpy's."

It was funny once, it was not funny after "OH!, THERE ONCE WAS A HERO NAMED RAGNAR THE RED!" times.

So, in true Beth fashion. Rather than doing something better, they did nothing at all. Except have Marcy talk shit to you constantly, even when just walking by and that crying bitch of an NPC talk about how he wouldn't be good for much.

Anyways, Beth NPCs already pull from a dialog list based on criteria. Such as walking around with Curie in Synth form gets comments from guards like "you shouldn't hang with synths" even though they should have no idea she is one. The problem is, their dialog selection is limited. No big deal in a linear game. But putting 200 hours into a Beth game really fucking kills it.

They know how much people play their games. They knew the dialog options wouldn't last that many hours. They didn't care. Honestly wouldn't be so annoying if they didn't feed us so much shit about how Oblivion NPCs would feel alive.

[Gaidin]

Anyways, Beth NPCs already pull from a dialog list based on criteria. Such as walking around with Curie in Synth form gets comments from guards like "you shouldn't hang with synths" even though they should have no idea she is one. The problem is, their dialog selection is limited. No big deal in a linear game. But putting 200 hours into a Beth game really fucking kills it.

They know how much people play their games. They knew the dialog options wouldn't last that many hours. They didn't care. Honestly wouldn't be so annoying if they didn't feed us so much shit about how Oblivion NPCs would feel alive.

That's sort of the funny thing. When they give you a set of quests that if you wanted to put your mind to it could complete in a quarter of the time if people really want to. Building an empire? You're hitting 200 hours and hitting these strange dialogue inanities.

[TheFeniX]

Well, it's really sad that Skyrim at least had the Civil War. I mean, it was cutdown so it didn't blow up consoles. But at least NPCs were helping you take over forts. Said NPCs then controlled the forts. In Fallout 4, it's "Hey, General: go solo all these enemies, solo build the camp, DO EVERYTHING, and people will show up." I feel more like a Courier in F4 than I ever did in New Vegas.

But none of that matters because reviewers are eating it up. I finally read a few reviews. 9s+ and the game is not that. Just because I can dump 200 hours into a game does not make it awesome. "Could have done better" is a valid complaint. But IGN continues to be a poster boy for "please buy ads."

"It is the Skyrim to Fallout 3’s Oblivion, if you will" - So, it's prettier and much more shallow?
"the main story isn’t nearly as gripping an attraction as the huge number of well-written side quests you’ll come across just by wandering through the ruins of the Boston " - I know, like that whole "ZOMG, who's the synth?" or "Kid in a fridge" or "Hey, drain this quarry?"

Last Voyage of the U.S.S. Constitution is a stand-out among mediocrity. But the quest itself is not interesting. It's fetch, battle, fetch, battle, funny cutscene. Ironside made it great, and that's on one voice actor and his writer. People are just so used to mediocrity it's sickening sometimes.

"A fully voiced male or female protagonist is a first for Fallout, but I frankly don’t feel like it added much beyond the convenience of not having to read as much text when playing from the couch. It doesn’t get in the way, either - performances are fine, if somewhat bland - and would only be objectionable to me if I’d envisioned my character’s voice as something outlandishly different. So it’s successfully unobtrusive, at least."

- Holy shit, I actually agree here. It's not as big a deal as people made it out to be because Beth wasn't going big on dialog options either way. That said, my one complain is that I can't (I have tried and failed) play a male character in this game. I'm not an RP snob, but everytime I heard the male protag speak dialog I selected I kept thinking "This is not me, I would not talk like that, I would not inflect like that." No idea why it's grating, but it is. I never had this problem with Shepard in Mass Effect. Maybe because Shepard was Shepard and my guy is FeniX. Could try naming him Shepard.

[Nephtys]

I think one difference was that 'Shepard' was more of a character than FO's protagonist when voiced. You had a lot of moments where the dialogue was also action, or radically different approaches rather than (ask obvious question?) (be nice, say yes), (be neutral, say maybe), (apologize and say no) or (be a total asshole for no reason).

Also since the FO4 protagonists are more blank placeholders for player insertion (people knew and reacted to Shepard as a person in their world), anything that took them away from that stood out.

[Vendetta]

Settler: "Oh help, Minutemen! My friend was kidnapped?"

Me: "Slow down, what do you need?"

Settler: "My friend was taken! I asked for help from the Minutemen, but I wasn't sure they'd come!"

Me:

She was in Sanctuary Hills... standing in my Power Armor Warehouse that has a Minutemen, USA and Brotherhood flag next to the door... Working on my set of T-45f power armor, painted in Minutemen livery... With a Minutemen Flag right next to the Power Armor Workstation...

Me: Bitch, you live in the second most heavily defended Minutemen outpost, with fucking Preston just chilling on a guard tower. How did you not think the Minutemen wouldn't have heard you?

It's funny how all the problems your settlements seem to have go away when Preston gets exiled to the swamp and can't tell you about them any more.

[TheFeniX]

Speaking of Preston: I plan to make him pay for his crimes. If I get some time off from Warframe soon, I need to get around to increasing the build limit of the drive-in theatre and building my murder pit. I drew it out while drunk one night, going to be awesome. Comfy couches elevated over a pit where I will spawn legendary mobs and make Preston fight them for my amusement. Full roof with lights and turrets around the outside to stall any escape attempts. I just need to find a see-thru wall that gunfire cannot go through. I'll work something out, I'm a smart guy with too much time on my hands.

Preston will fight for glory and I will get the spoils. Probably more bullshit with mirelurk damage increases though. WHO RUN BARTER TOWN!?

[Vendetta]

Preston lives at Coastal Cottage now.

Where the other strange people who smell of mirelurk live.

[PREDATOR490]

Really wish the mod tools would come out because this game is just begging for someone to convert the Institute Synths into Terminators. Even more amusing, their armor and white clothes makes a stormtrooper reskin viable as well.

Tool the Railroad and Miniute Men to look like the Resistance / Rebels and you have the makings of an interesting Star Wars / Terminator crossover. The Power Armors could definitely use more pretty skins but so far most of the early mods are doing really light stuff.

[Jub]

I really want a RIFTs power armor mod (specifically for SAMAS armor) and a 40k power armor and weapons mod. Show the BoS what real power armor looks like.

[TheFeniX]

Model replacers don't seem to be coming until the GECK is out in early 2016. Seems Beth baked the skeletons into the model nifs. Some guy was able to get some nude body into the game, but sans feet. I assume he ported a Skyrim body over as their body models are sans hands and feet, whereas Fallout models include everything but the hands/head. I doubt it works for pretty much anything though.

This is why I love perverts. Those guys are so hard up for tits, they are hastily modifying nifskope, hacking away with hex editors, and desperately trying to figure out the rigging system for F4. They push modding progress along so fast because boobs are awesome. If it's possible to add tits, they will find a way! God bless them. God bless them all.

Anyways, until they can find a way to rig new models to the in-game skeletons, or create their own and get them into the game we're up shit creak on anything but reskins. If you're interested, some guy did hex edit in bigger boobs and ass for the default female body. You know, the real important stuff.