Fallout Fallout 4 Thread

[unfairlight]

But some of the quests in 4 were acceptable and they were interesting enough to keep me playing. Stalker never did that to me.

 

[Fenix]

That's more or less my perspective. I kinda treated it as a Far Cry game with more quests in a post apocalyptic world. Similarly to Far Cry, I didn't care at all about it after I was done with it.

What's more interesting - I hated and still hate F3 because it tried to look like Fallout, to imitate it, I hate it as impostor.
On the contraty, I absolutely have no such stanse toward F4 because I clearly see they stopped their tries to be "Fallout" - this is noticeable in the design of roleplay system, and other changes.

 

[ilitarist]

Horizon can.

I haven't played that Horizon but I've played dozens mods like that. Usually you need just an hour to see that they add fake difficulty, use kitchensink mentality of adding every feature there is, don't integrate well into UI (often add some sort of inventory item or spell for doing new stuff), become even more trivially easy to play once you find how to break it and so on. Requiem mod for Skyrim was like that, bragging about how it adds TRUE ROLEPLAY. Yeah, I saw that hardcore play. Don't want to dwell on it too much but there's a single specific path of progress and mod does everything it can to punish your for straying from it. True roleplay becomes about gaming the system, realizing that you're playing munchkin D&D where Barabarian must have Charisma 3.

Team of professional designers had worked on those systems for years and results leave a lot to be desired. Few disorganized guys who try to overhaul it usually do much worse. I'd trust more in people who add small, curated additions to those systems. E.g. Fallout 4 can be made much better just by importing stimpack and weight mechanics from Survival mode.

 

[ilitarist]

Fallout 3 is worse than Oblivion and Fallout 4 is like a shittier Sims with guns. People like to say 3 is the best Elder Scrolls game, but Daggerfall exists. Daggerfall is better.

I'd expect people who like Daggerfall to like Fallout 4. It is basically the latest step in Bethesda's attempt to come to Daggerfall idea from the side of more traditional RPGs. In Morrowind they ditched most elements of systemic world and they gradually brought them back to what looks like a proper RPG with real characters and huge well-designed world. In Oblivion they've added open world with advanced AI for independent actors, Fallout 3 had random encounters and faction/character reactivity of sorts, Skyrim had even more global random encounters (dragons) as well as more systemic approach to NPCs (huge number of potential followers, connections between NPCs, friendship and marriage) as well as Daggerfall-style radiant quests that brought you into an existing place with its own story for an unrelated reason. Fallout 4 has all of the previous plus settlement building and diverse enemies, those legendary dudes plus more diverse and important factions (some of it was in Skyrim too).

They try to recreate a systemic world simulation a la Daggerfall, pretty sure of it. But with a human face. It's as if Dwarf Fortress developers saw the light, decided to make a small compact citybuilder with good UI and graphics and proceeded to release new versions of it reintroducing Dwarf Fortress things, but in working state with supportive UI.

 

[Fenix]

TRUE ROLEPLAY

Dude, I event don't perceive F4 as RPG, WTF you talking about...

 

[DalekFlay]

I took 3ish years off gaming and when I came back a few months ago I started with Fallout 4. Love the franchise (read: mostly 1, 2 and New Vegas) too much not to. After 100 hours (standard Codex playtime before raging something sucks horrible and never should have been made) I have to say the shooting was improved so much! You can like... enjoy the combat sometimes. That's cool. The factions thing was like a cute try, like watching a little kid pretend to be on TV or something, mimicking the work of others. Still, way better than Fallout 3.

 

[ilitarist]

Maybe I'm misremembering but I feel like Fallout 3 had more quests that didn't involve completing a dungeon. Fallout 4 - just like Skyrim - forces those kind of quests on you too much. Fallout 3 felt more balanced in this regard, e.g. IIRC none of the Megaton quests involved finishing a dungeon apart from Wasteland Survival Guide which also had a lot of different activities.

Also the basic premise is more questionable. F3 had a good setup giving you opportunity to become familiar with your character and allowing him to ignore the main quests if he wants so. Fallout 4 protagonist ignoring main quest is strange and you're expected to do a lot of side quests before finding your son - at least on any respectable difficulty. But yeah, the core conflict is much more intersting than water purification.

 

[Comte]

I took 3ish years off gaming and when I came back a few months ago I started with Fallout 4. Love the franchise (read: mostly 1, 2 and New Vegas) too much not to. After 100 hours (standard Codex playtime before raging something sucks horrible and never should have been made) I have to say the shooting was improved so much! You can like... enjoy the combat sometimes. That's cool. The factions thing was like a cute try, like watching a little kid pretend to be on TV or something, mimicking the work of others. Still, way better than Fallout 3.

Welcome back. Did you try the survival difficulty at all? And if so what did you think?

 

[Perkel]

Bought VIVE and i got F4VR and i must say as sandbox it plays much better than non VR version.
Especially when you have .223 from fallout 2 and you have mod that makes every NPC killable.

Cleaning wasteland out of betsheda npcs is fun

 

[DalekFlay]

Welcome back. Did you try the survival difficulty at all? And if so what did you think?

I read it was too bullet-spongey so I went for normal on my first playthrough. The game is so brain-numbingly easy though I do grant you it needs some kind of added challenge. Not sure more enemy HP is the way to go though.

 

[ilitarist]

I don't get it about bullet-spongey.

Eventually I got bored with no fast travel and switched to Very Hard. The combat became much harder because in terms of combat difficulty Survival is somewhere around Normal. There are tough enemies that need a lot of punishment but those guys are rare and powerful, I have to prepare for them with mines and critical shots to legs/arms to disable them. And still with my sniper rifle I can one-shot a lot of enemies, including some legendary guys.

For once the balance is fine in regards of difficulty. Previous Bethesda games went too far in terms of enemy HP on higher difficulty so that, say, stealth and archery weren't that useful - you won't be able to do significant damage before it's back to normal fight. Crowd control skills are much more important than armor because CC doesn't care about enemy HP/damage and you won't be able to develop armor skill in Skyrim on legendary because everyone will kill you in couple of hits anyway. Fallout 4 on very hard is well balanced: you will occasionally find very tough enemies like Deathclaws or Glowing Ones but if you use presented tools and do everything right you can still oneshot most of enemies. So switch to it and don't complain about easy difficulty.

 

[Squid]

Maybe I'm misremembering but I feel like Fallout 3 had more quests that didn't involve completing a dungeon. Fallout 4 - just like Skyrim - forces those kind of quests on you too much.

I remember it like that too. And I also have this odd feeling that the Fallout 3 dungeons weren't super similar to each other and made it feel like most of the dungeons weren't simply dungeons. Fallout 4 felt like some random run down store or apartment's basement in every dungeon from what I played of it.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I doubt anybody's praising Fallout 3's C&C, it was just as shit as almost every other feature in the game, but it was nevertheless a step above Fallout 4 in the same way that having one of your balls crushed is a step above having both of them crushed.

lets see this

https://www.ultimate-tech-news.com/fallout-4-human-error-human-error/

You’ll need to confront an integral decision in this pursuit after you get to a little prison with not-unfriendly physician Roslyn Chambers. You’re able to spare the woman kill her.

 

[orcinator]

I don't get it about bullet-spongey.

Fighting "dude with gun" but with x200 HP and DPS isn't particularly interesting.

Previous Bethesda games went too far in terms of enemy HP on higher difficulty so that, say, stealth and archery weren't that useful - you won't be able to do significant damage before it's back to normal fight

I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, stealth is practically godmode in skyrim and the fallouts since you're invisible and enemies only take 20 seconds at most to forget about the object that penetrated their skull, after which you just penetrate them again.

 

[Bliblablubb]

stealth is practically godmode in skyrim

Exept when your enemy sidesteps the sneak attack from 100 meters away while his back was turned towards you all the time. Arrows are noisy I guess? Aaaaah, good times.

But I have to admit finding it pretty funny when anyone assumes Bethesda would actually "balance" anything in their games, or at least after a certain point. Which is usually lvl20-25, when the "testers" have finished "testing" the mainquests, the only thing that counts for advertising. After that they seem to just throw random numbers around.

Fallout 4 is an especially bad case of that, just two examples:

1) Apparently half of the developers thought this game was about mech combat (= power armor). So at least two boss fights, during the mainquest no less, will have the enemy spend all his time in stealthboy mode. Making him untargetable with VATS. What, you thought the game was meant to be played with VATS? Aahahaha nope.
Or try going to the Glowing Sea at lvl40+ without one and watch Albino Radscorpion Murderbosses instagib you (attacking before emerging, because... Bethesda), repeating that with the Far Harbor landfishes or that cloaked ASSaultron ASSrapist stabbing you in the back after pressing a button. Players love PA and will never leave it, no need to change anything!

2) Weapon mods. The early weapons show planning and a concept, mods only change the damage output in small ways. Later weapons throw that overboard, making it look like the intern filled in numbers 5 mins before the game went gold. 100 dmg automatic rifles and stuff. So in the end you either have to go power armor for open fights, or instakill everything with a plasma sniper rifle sneak attack, modded for crits.
On the other hand guns like the minigun are useless dead weight, because the designers didn't know their own game mechanics.

Not even going deep iinto the legendary mods, that are either useless or gamebreaking overpowered (wounding/explosive). Fire dmg not stacking for the first time in a Bethesda game makes the Ashmaker minigun look like a trolling attempt. Or the fact that combat armor seems to fall of the sky somewhere, since even raiders abandon their intended indentity, ditching the "raider armor" brand in favor for that one.

TLDR: FO4 might be better in the graphics and gunplay department for a quick game, but compared to FO3 it looks like a rushed glued together piece of random stuff done be several people without supervision.

 

[Bigg Boss]

My favorite part of Fallout 4 was killing my son.

 

[ilitarist]

Fighting "dude with gun" but with x200 HP and D{S isn't particularly interesting.

The point is it doesn't happen on high difficulty in Fallout 4. There are few enemies you can't kill with just several shots and those are bosses or wear power armor or otherwise thematically appropriate.

I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, stealth is practically godmode in skyrim and the fallouts since you're invisible and enemies only take 20 seconds at most to forget about the object that penetrated their skull, after which you just penetrate them again.

...But HP bloat happen in previous Bethesda games. And it made stealth useless on high difficutly setting. Because if you need 20 shots to kill a guy then ability to make first shot 300% more powerful is useless. It was only god mode on lower difficulty setting. I guess you could strike, retreat and get back but this would mean you'd spend hours fighting through any dungeon, and it can be problematic in overworld location. In F4 up until the very end you meet characters that you can oneshot from stealth. And same enemies can overpower you if you attack head-on. It was way worse in previous games.

 

[Ranarama]

...But HP bloat happen in previous Bethesda games. And it made stealth useless on high difficutly setting. Because if you need 20 shots to kill a guy then ability to make first shot 300% more powerful is useless. It was only god mode on lower difficulty setting.

There's another obvious solution you're missing.

Few enemies in Bethesda games actually need to be killed to progress, or get whatever reward exists behind them.

Frankly the best playthroughs of any of their games consists of stealth / illusion (where applicable) characters that sneak, steal and run past everything. 0 non-mandatory kills is the goal, and it's achievable when you play like you know all the trash on the enemies is useless crap, and you're impatient to complete whatever quest-line you're on.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

oh my, people bringing bethesda "high difficulty setting" as a proof of quality. because "will i have enough cheese in my inventory to survive this?" is totally quality stuff.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Few enemies in Bethesda games actually need to be killed to progress, or get whatever reward exists behind them.

 

[Wayward Son]

But HP bloat happen in previous Bethesda games. And it made stealth useless on high difficutly setting. Because if you need 20 shots to kill a guy then ability to make first shot 300% more powerful is useless. It was only god mode on lower difficulty setting. I guess you could strike, retreat and get back but this would mean you'd spend hours fighting through any dungeon, and it can be problematic in overworld location. In F4 up until the very end you meet characters that you can oneshot from stealth. And same enemies can overpower you if you attack head-on. It was way worse in previous games.

lolwut. I'm not proud to say this but I have an insane number of hours in Oblivion and Skyrim from my younger years, and even on higher difficulties, stealth archery is godmode where it doesn't take much to kill anything beyond boss tier enemies

 

[ilitarist]

lolwut. I'm not proud to say this but I have an insane number of hours in Oblivion and Skyrim from my younger years, and even on higher difficulties, stealth archery is godmode where it doesn't take much to kill anything beyond boss tier enemies

Perhaps I was bad at Oblivion but I had an impression that your bow powers can't outgrow enemies who get both more health and better gear. And I remember that in Skyrim/Fallout 3 everyone turned into HP bloats by the end of the game.

 

[RNGsus]

With the difficulty slider below average maybe, but npcs were otherwise notorious pin cushions and archery underpowered. You can't take anything down with one head shot in Oblivion.

 

[Fenix]

Dunno guys, was playing Horizon and haven't seen such problem.
But wan't far into the game, leveling was slowed.

 

[DalekFlay]

I always play sneaky snipers in these games and Fallout 4 was no different from Skyrim before it, it's basically cheat mode. There was no fucking giant radscorpion a-hole that could match even a single round or two from a stealthed, silenced distance weapon. In close there was pretty much nothing that could stop a silenced 10mm, let alone that special stealth gun you get later in the Railroad questline. The only enemies I remember in the whole game ever giving me a problem were high level legendary assaultrons, because they run at you really fast and detect you in stealth better than most other enemies.