Fallout 4 Pre-Release Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[mondblut]

Lands of Lore was popamolest of popamole. It's a fucking Oblivion of Dungeon Master clones.

Huh. I see. Easier than Eye of Beholder games then?

I don't know how to measure the difficulty of mamba games (not like it matters to begin with, CoD can be "hard" too). What matters is that it had a pregenerated PC (selected out of 3, methinks) and 2 joining NPCs, RPG systems were next to nonexistent, and overall it was an adventure game under a thin wrapper of an RPGlite.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

So, I get that it is mostly like an even more streamlined and "balanced" Skyrim mod? With very challenging (level scaled) encounters? And no noticeable RPG elements?

Like any FPS shooter?

 

[Keldryn]

Why? whats the rush?

I have a full-time programming job and I have a 2.5 hour daily commute (round trip). I'm married and I have a 5 year-old and a 3 year-old and I want to spend time with my family each day. I need to work out 3 or 4 times per week. I own a house that needs maintaining and on the weekends I have errands to run -- oh, and I like to play with my children on the weekend too.

So I don't have a whole lot of time for playing computer games. Say I have 100 hours in a given year to play computer games (I'm making that number up, but it's probably not too far off the mark). I'd rather play a new game every 4 months than spend a whole year on one game.

I'm sure that people were bitching about removing actually useful shit. I mean who cared about medicine, first aid, gambling and shit like that?

People definitely complained about Fallout 3 having fewer skills than Fallout 1 & 2. I think that some people complained about removing those specific skills too (because it showed that combat skills were the focus of the game), but I'm not motivated enough to start reading posts from 2008-2009 to verify this.

Yeah, just like Terrarria, home decoration with generic NPCs. Generic NPCs that you'll be able to find into normal cities because there is no way they'll be forcing this shit on non-autistic people. Impact on the world? The city is build on player, which means that it will be completely generic, which means that NPCs won't react to it by anything else than "Oh there is a city in [generic location]" "Oh, a city in [generic location] was attacked, how horrible". What's the point?

You've gotta use your imagination with some of this stuff. What's the point of any of sort of reactivity, as you know that the non-generic NPCs can only react to things that the developers thought of in advance and had the time and ability to script? Building a new town in the middle of the wasteland can provide an illusion of making in impact on the world, even if it doesn't have a measurable effect on anything else. CRPGs are all about selling that illusion.

Upon discovering a new fighting game some players will try to set up a camera to look under female character's skirts. Some call them perverts, I call them amateur movie directors.

True story: This is exactly what happened during one design team meeting when I was working on Max Payne 3. We had just gotten some production-ready artwork for the opening level of the game and one of the leads turned on the debug camera and started looking up the dresses of the female characters.

A home base to store your shit is good. A house-building mini-game just drains resources from gameplay features in order to please people who should really be playing the Sims instead of whatever crap they are playing.

Like I said, the engine probably uses a run-time world editor anyway (so the designers can build and test their maps without having to recompile and restart the game), so this functionality is already in place. They've just added a streamlined UI and some restrictions on what objects you can place in the world.

Logical fallacy. The people who are working on the house building mechanics are very likely to be dedicated strategy game designers who wouldn't be able to work on the RPG portions anyway. As for the possibility of financial drain, the general line of thought is that any marketable feature ends up paying for itself.

Design teams often have a few members who work on the game mechanics and systems while the rest build the "levels" or gameplay areas. The building mechanics are probably something created by one of the gameplay designers when he had a few spare moments here and there. It looks like you're just acquiring raw materials and then spending them to build structures; the system looks fairly self-contained, so it would have little impact on the core gameplay balance. I very much doubt that they hired a dedicated strategy game designer just to create this.

 

[Lhynn]

So I don't have a whole lot of time for playing computer games. Say I have 100 hours in a given year to play computer games (I'm making that number up, but it's probably not too far off the mark). I'd rather play a new game every 4 months than spend a whole year on one game.

Why? just have fun dude, even if its half a game a decade. Theres no need to play the latest and lamest, find a good game, stick with the game till you are done with it, then move on. Youll have plenty of time to play the rest when you retire.

Youve got no real obligation to complete as many games as possible, or to even complete them at all, if a game is shit just toss it aside and play something worth playing, for however long it takes.

 

[pippin]

New Vegas had less skills than 3, but were used more often and most of the times helped you to do quests differently. In 3 you mostly kill things.
People complain about the building feature because it's nice to complain about things, but also for the same reason they complained about the number of skills in 3: it takes the focus of what should be important about a game and gives it to other stuff which is superficial or unnecessary for certain people.

 

[AW8]

New Vegas had less skills than 3, but were used more often and most of the times helped you to do quests differently. In 3 you mostly kill things.

Both games actually have 13 skills. In New Vegas, Big Guns and Small Guns merged into Guns, but Survival was added.

 

[Jaesun]

Eurogamer.net ‏@eurogamer 5s5 seconds ago
Dogmeat the Fallout 4 dog cannot die: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-16-dogmeat-the-fallout-4-dog-cannot-die…

 

[AW8]

It's a game made for children, after all.

 

[Metro]

Chris Avellone ‏@ChrisAvellone 38s38 seconds ago
#E3

Crooked Bee This needs to be an avatar.

It's a game made for children, after all.

[Child At Heart] What's wrong with that?

 

[Lemming42]

The dog better be optional.

 

[Hirato]

This is just latching onto anything that is different from Black Isle's Fallout games and using it as evidence as to why Bethesda's version sucks.

People are less willing to accept changes when they loathe the very thing that makes them, news at 11!

 

[Keldryn]

Why? just have fun dude, even if its half a game a decade. Theres no need to play the latest and lamest, find a good game, stick with the game till you are done with it, then move on. Youll have plenty of time to play the rest when you retire.

Youve got no real obligation to complete as many games as possible, or to even complete them at all, if a game is shit just toss it aside and play something worth playing, for however long it takes.

That's pretty much what I do. My PC is mostly running hardware from 5 years ago, and I don't own a PS4 or Xbox One, so I don't play the latest games. I don't finish most games that I start playing. My original comment was in reference to devoting a lot of time to a complex and difficult game and finishing it multiple times. With a very limited amount of gaming time, I'd rather play three different games than master one game in depth.

Eurogamer.net ‏@eurogamer 5s5 seconds ago
Dogmeat the Fallout 4 dog cannot die: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-16-dogmeat-the-fallout-4-dog-cannot-die…

I can accept this as a gameplay convenience. The dog companion in previous games was too fragile beyond the first few hours of the game, and I always had to leave him behind to avoid getting him killed. At least in the original games I could see where he was easily enough; in Fallout 3 he was usually behind me and out of sight. I'm generally in favor of the "nobody permanently dies unless the whole party is wiped out" idea anyway, as it saves me a lot of reloading.

I'm guessing that the dog might be your only companion in Fallout 4, rather than having other characters to recruit. It's been a while since I played Fallout 3, but you could have one single human(oid) companion and Dogmeat, right?

 

[Metro]

Said it before: hate companions. Hope none are mandatory save for brief stints in quests.

 

[Veelq]

People will criticize what they see, because they cannot criticize what they cannot see ( RPG elements ). I personally dont care about housing and all this shit that they shown, its fine IF other elements are good. And that unknown makes me worry. Have you guys seen No Man's Sky presentation? Huge world full of ... yeah of what ... i have the same fear with F4. And fuck unkillable dog!

 

[Lhynn]

inb4 first mod out makes it killable.

 

[Bubbles]

The dog better be optional.

The way this is shaping up, I'm guessing he'll be a core gameplay mechanic.

 

[Lemming42]

The dog better be optional.

The way this is shaping up, I'm guessing he'll be a core gameplay mechanic.

It'll be Martin in Oblivion all over again. The dog fulfills it's heroic destiny while the player runs errands for it.

 

[Gnidrologist]

So, it will be possible to leave dog gnawing on deathclaws and supermutants till their dead, while waiting somewhere safe?

 

[Jaesun]

inb4 first mod out makes it killable.

But that would break the dog romance mod.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

It's not fallout 4 but...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The dog better be optional.

With him being unkillable, I'm pretty sure he'll be essential to the story. They're gonna milk the emotional engagement for all it's worth.

trigger warning - feels

Oh well, at least it's easier to get attached to a dog. When the villain in Fable 2 kills your family you don't give a shit, but then he kills your dog and it's go time on his fairy ass.

I can accept this as a gameplay convenience. The dog companion in previous games was too fragile beyond the first few hours of the game, and I always had to leave him behind to avoid getting him killed. At least in the original games I could see where he was easily enough; in Fallout 3 he was usually behind me and out of sight. I'm generally in favor of the "nobody permanently dies unless the whole party is wiped out" idea anyway, as it saves me a lot of reloading.

I'm guessing that the dog might be your only companion in Fallout 4, rather than having other characters to recruit. It's been a while since I played Fallout 3, but you could have one single human(oid) companion and Dogmeat, right?

He died quickly in vanilla FO3, but the Broken Steel DLC gives Dogmeat gobs of health. In typical Bethesda fashion, it's apparently a bug, something like giving him 300HP per level instead of adding some extra points to his initial 300HP. You have to try really hard if you want him dead. I'm talking multiple mini-nukes to the head.

And yes, one humanoid companion (and the Mr. Handy) plus dogmeat. Amusingly Dogmeat is the smartest one since he can fetch specific items in your vicinity, while the others mostly just fight.

 

[BobNotHerbert]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06...discusses-companion-functionality-immortality

A few more details about companions in general. Finally, some confirmation that it isn't just the damn dog. That was pissing me off more than the voice protagonist.

Also...they want to prevent save scumming...but then implement a dialogue system so vague it'll encourage save scumming. Tactical failure reload: bad. Dialogue Tourette's reload: good.

 

[Zetor]

Dog(meat) will just have to take a few pointers from Dead to Rights Retribution:

 

[Necroscope]

Eurogamer.net ‏@eurogamer 5s5 seconds ago
Dogmeat the Fallout 4 dog cannot die: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-16-dogmeat-the-fallout-4-dog-cannot-die…

 

[MilesBeyond]

I kinda like the dialogue wheel thing. Apparently they put it in because it allowed them to make a system where people could do other things while talking to NPCs, which to me means that Beth has finally realized that their dialogue is so piss-poor that people would rather do literally anything else.