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Reisal

Fallout 4

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Bethesda simply can't do actually thoughtful and balanced game design. The older games like Morrowind are the outliers here since the systems in place were so expansive and consistent with their interconnection to the world, that exploring and exploiting them were fun and rewarding with a great sense of agency in spite of how unbalanced they really were. Over time their game design has become increasingly rigid and narrowed down in how they let you play the game, like significant NPCs being unkillable or immune to altering effects because reasons, or only being able to complete a quest in the specific way the designer intends for you by triggering the right scripts, but still just as unbalanced, so there's little payoff to it.

That's usually why their games are so widely praised during the initial honeymoon period, but once people have familiarized themselves with the game mechanics, people are increasingly frustrated over how hollow and shallow they are revealed to be.

The backlash towards Fallout 4 seems to be a lot worse than their previous games as well. I'm real glad I decided not get swept up by the hype and buy it at launch. I'm wondering if I will even bother getting it from a sale at this point. The game seems to have so many fundamental problems apart from just the design of the mechanics and character progression, that I doubt even extensive modding will be enough to actually make it a worthwhile experience.

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Most of the complaints about it getting too easy could be solved with a hard level cap. Cap the enemy level higher than the player on harder difficulties and make some fun fights.

The terrible quest design and dialogue have been getting worse for so long I just expect it now. I noticed in FO4 that arriving in a quest dungeon before I've started a quest usually means I'll find generic versions of the quest NPCs. Killing them has no effect whatsoever on the quest. The real ones will just spawn when the quest starts.

I get the impression they let different team members build little slices of the game and have very poor communication between them. Most quests are too easy to be bothered about, but I found one that required me to go digging around like in Morrowind and two others that had skill checks!

The same goes for the maps. Some of them are brilliantly designed, with multiple paths, clever use of items and text to tell stories, and gorgeous lighting. Others look like they were assembled by first-time mappers, with holes to the void everywhere, nonsensical light placement, and glitches galore.

The inconsistency seems worse in FO4 than in their previous games. Did they transfer a bunch of recent college grads to the team? Did they just rush to build half the game in the month before the release?

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What kind of time we live now? Feels like making unfinished games is more... profitable.
The same story with Sims 4.

_______________________________________________-
Money money money money money......

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Very disappointed, The game is just bland and everything I do feels pointless, same issues as Skyrim except they managed to remove fun from the game as well by focusing to much on settlement building. They should've released this mechanic in a DLC so they could of at least polish the game and add more charm to it. Fallout 4 also feels to much like a dungeon crawler, which is the worst possible thing that could happen. Seriously I hate how it feels like Borderlands and Minecraft had a big ugly man baby together.

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I haven't played in a month, but its mostly due to my pre-occupation with other things. Such as focusing on developing my Doom mod.

This is probably the only other modern game I've played in the past few years to completion, other than Alien:Isolation.

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Put nearly 200 hours into it, but it doesn't hold a candle to New Vegas, the ultimate of the modern Fallout games in my opinion. At least the shooting part of it is fun, and I like exploring very much. I've also put a fair amount of time into the settlements, despite them being completely disjointed from the game. But I agree, the dialogue system is borked and nothing you do leaves any impact on anything really. I'm level 60 and still ask 'What's a Synth?' whenever the topic comes up. Stupid.

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The following post is purely superficial and aesthetic, just so you know. I watched a friend play the game for about half an hour and it looked pretty cool, but why would the next iteration of such a huge franchise rely so much on such an outdated engine? The art direction is excellent, and the level of detail is high, but the rendering seems very PS3-era. There seems to be an enormous amount of shader data missing from everything I saw. Very few objects had cast shadows and the propagation of light in general was very narrowly defined, something that became particularly obvious in vividly lit areas. Is this because the developers are still learning how to take advantage of modern hardware, or are they reluctant to use optimization and/or upgrade the engine?

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Hello all,

Big time Fallout fan here from way back when it was just called 'Fallout' and not Fallout 1.

Me and my fellow Fallout fans on NMA did not have big expectations of Fallout 4 when it was announced just like we had our serious doubts about Fallout 3.
Fallout New Vegas proved to be a gem with somewhat rough edges as Obsidian could not fix all the parts of Fallout 3 but it could at least make it somewhat closer to a real RPG including meaningful quests, in general rounded characters, and a strong campaign.

However we all expected that Fallout 4 would be more of a sequel to Fallout 3 than continue on the improvements that Fallout New Vegas brought, and in general we have not been wrong about that.

The combat is more First Person Shooter like now but Fallout was never intended as a FPS, and the parts that are very important to it like the campaign, quests, and NPCs still fall flat compared those of NV. There are only a few elements I myself considered entertaining.

On top of that Bethesda tacked on that annoying town building game that barely does anything for the game. It doesn't have any influence on the end game for example.

I also found the campaign pretty lackluster and I really don't think the game should have had a voiced protagonist.
In many ways Fallout 4 even feels like a step back from Fallout 3 such as reducing or removing skill checks and options with the biggest crime of course being the conversation system. (someone else here already brought up how disconnected the player sometimes is from the player character. "What's a synth?" what do you think those damn moving mannequins are that we keep running into?)

I myself gave this game about twenty days of playing before I just became so bored of it that I decided to throw it off.
Most of this time I had been exploring as I wanted to see what all the locations on the map were like but I found it rather unrewarding. (I also really dislike the whole dynamic quest system for which these locations seem to have been created)

I honestly can not recommend this game to anyone unless you are absolutely bored and need something to pass the time.

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At least you got 20 days out of it, I couldn't even get more than 3 days before getting very tired of it.

It would seem that Fallout 4 was aimed more for the new players to the franchise than the actual veterans, but some veterans still like it for what it is.

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Avoozl said:

At least you got 20 days out of it, I couldn't even get more than 3 days before getting very tired of it.

It would seem that Fallout 4 was aimed more for the new players to the franchise than the actual veterans, but some veterans still like it for what it is.


I indeed had to put myself through some pain but I had to give it a chance, there had to be a moment in which I thought "Hmm, this is okay/good".
And occasionally there was some hint to that before it got snuffed.
(I also wanted to wrote a review for the game on the NMA forum plus if I criticized it I wanted to base it on my own experience and not what I saw in Youtube videos or opinion pieces of others)

Yep, Fallout 4 is definitely intended for a whole different group of gamers than the original audience.
For me it pretty much finished what interest I had the franchise. (Fallout 3 continued the decline since FOBOS, Fallout 4 kicked it down the slope)

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I would like to see a better way of managing the settlements, with some kind of overarching interface. Or, like in the Hearthfire DLC for Skyrim, with the Housecarls; you should be able to appoint one of the settlers to be a mayor of a settlement. Also, it would be cool if you could just send detachments of minutemen/droids/BOS etc, to take care of minor settlement attacks.

You would basically of be re-forming a government for the commonwealth.

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Experiencing Fallout 3 from Bethesda, my standards of Fallout 4 wasn't very high, so I finished the game feeling rather satisfied. In fact believe it's superior than Fallout 3 in most ways. Combat wise it absolutely shits on its predecessor and it's also better than Fallout New Vegas. And that's a big thing. It's not just about the feel of handling weaponry but also how your enemies would take cover, no longer super speed strafe and better animated. I really never needed to use Vats except for quick draw. I'm not a graphics junky, and yet I found quite a few scenes to be screenshot worthy (just good detail really).

Can't say the dialogue system would be my first choice but I'm not strongly bothered by it. The map initially felt small but there was plenty to do in it to occupy me. Also the city itself was bit of a Warzone with plenty of points of interest to distract me from the task at hand.

What I believe were the major let downs is the early gameplay and tutorials (if there was one). No obvious establishments to trade items with, tedious settlement building with an initial overwhelming amount of junk to collect, a somewhat underwhelming early introduction of a Deathclaw, beginning quests that wanted you to travel far quite soon and acquiring powerarmor way too early which I didn't use until the story required it. Personally I would of made acquiring power armour a quest in itself with some tutorial to back it.

Otherwise, I feel people are too harsh. Almost like they played Fallout 1 and 2 then jumped straight to 4.

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Chezza said:

Otherwise, I feel people are too harsh. Almost like they played Fallout 1 and 2 then jumped straight to 4.

Nope... Problem in one: Fallout 4 isn't RPG anymore.
I love Fallout 1,2 and New Vegas exactly for RPG element and there i could become anyone: Killer or Saver, Stranger, Dumb or just Pervert Woman who loves dicks or opposite.
MM... Such content were in first two series and in New Vegas with mods. But amm...
Fallout 4 is a good shooter game but if you knew how i hate shooters even if i can't kill everyone.

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I always liked the skill/speech checks you could do in New Vegas (explosive 30 to disarm a bomb, black widow to kill Benny in his sleep, earn an insane amount of caps from Mr House via barter, trick a Legion officer into giving you info by pretending to be retarded ect).

Fallout 4 lacks a lot of those (It does have some mind you, the USS Constitution quest has a few) and is probably a result of removing the skill point system and just adding the skill benefits to the perks. I kind of like the new skill system but also dislike it, I miss the ability to focus on medicine AND guns on a single level up (which is often how I go).

Although I am enjoying it, level 65 on my Brotherhood save and level 73 on my Railroad save (turns out that old XP methods from New Vegas still work).

The story on the other hand...

STORY END SPOILERS:

Spoiler

The ending sucks, "the nuclear option" (nuking the institute) is the ending for the Minute Men, the Railroad AND the Brotherhood! What the fuck is that lazy shit? The nuke seems like something the BoS would do (R.I.P Enclave mobile missile platform) but the Railroad? Wouldn't they want to seize synth production and control it themselves for a better purpose? And the Minutemen would probably just hug everyone and send me to solve ghoul problems at Sanctuary.

Also the lack of a slideshow showing how I changed the world around me is a kick in the dick, how will the world change in response to my deeds? What becomes of the characters I changed the lives of? Does Preston stop being a twat?

I fear none of this will be known until DLC.

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mrthejoshmon said:

I always liked the skill/speech checks you could do in New Vegas (explosive 30 to disarm a bomb, black widow to kill Benny in his sleep, earn an insane amount of caps from Mr House via barter, trick a Legion officer into giving you info by pretending to be retarded ect).

These existed because NV was made by Obsidian. Bethesda Fallout has never used non-combat skills in a meaningful way. Hell, Bethesda in general haven't used non-combat skills meaningfully since Daggerfall.

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https://bethesda.net/#en/events/game.../2016/02/16/77

I didn't know that they had already announced the other DLCs in advance. The "wasteland workshop" DLC, says it will expand upon the settlement feature. I hope that it will introduce a new interface for the settlements, that will make them easier to manage; my supply-lines are kind of out of wack.

Yesterday, I started up the file again, but I was turned off to play, because everyone around me decided to "dislike" me for no reason.

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I bought the season pass before the price went up. Automatron is amusing. Lack of buildable eyebots is disappointing. Using corpses to build something like Borg or Cybermen would be fun. Mods are going to be sweet with this.

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It sucks that the price went up. I want more Fallout but I don't like the idea of paying first without even knowing what you will get or when. For being a cautious consumer I'm somewhat being punished when I'm usually punished for buying into DLC early. The gaming industry is untrustworthy with such product handling.

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Spoiler

I started playing a bit yesterday with the new DLC, but didn't get that far into it. When I loaded up my file, I heard a report on the radio that an invading force was trying to take over the Castle. I went there, and fended off the attackers; it was the BOS. Other than that, I didn't see anything new yet.

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Spoiler

I like how your robots scale level with you, my level 72 assaultron is extremely powerful and can actually deal damage to the beasts I encounter but my sentry does fuck all and he misses everything with those cluster bombs.

Also the Tesla T60 Armor looks great in Sentinel paint and now my full brotherhood set has legendary effects, the robot armor looks ok but I just give it to settlers.

The new robot attacks on my settlements are actually threatening due to the tankbots death nuke ability. I also dread the assaultron headed enemies because that laser is the rek.

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I just faced the main antagonist for like the 4th time in a row, because of the mission breaking. I finally got it working, and the fucking game crashed to desktop.

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I had it crash at least once, but I spent most of a dozen retries just improving on my combat with what I brought to the fight.

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Aliotroph? said:

I had it crash at least once, but I spent most of a dozen retries just improving on my combat with what I brought to the fight.


Despite the technical issues, I really do like this DLC. I think the features it adds are cool. Moreover, at level 55, it's still a good challenge. I don't feel like an unstoppable juggernaut.

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At level 73 I just steam rolled everything (and I always play on very hard).

I even vowed not to use the OP explosive minigun I nicknamed "gamebreaker" (for obvious reasons), it probably didn't help that my follower rekt everything.

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The latest patch completely broke the game for me, from 1920x1080 Medium defaults I had to go down to 1280x720 Lowest possible settings and do ini tweaks to keep it playable so it doesn't stutter down to 5 FPS for 30 seconds, every 3 minutes.

With every patch this game only gets worse technically. Note: I run Phenom II X4 955, Radeon 7850 2GB and 4GB Ram, not the finest setup (it was okay in 2011) but jesus, I can play Witcher 3 on medium in 1920x1080 with FPS locked to 30 and keep it stable, but not this game?

No wonder Bethesda are hiring new graphics programmers.

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Several of the patches have improved the game's performance for me. The outrageously long load screens disappeared, assets usually load correctly now (walking on the low-res LOD freeway was weird), and I haven't been teleported by using a scope in a couple months.

I played the DLC at lvl 84 on very hard. I died lots. The people who found it really easy seem to have come up with a better follow setup than I did.

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Spoiler

Last night, I loaded up my file and defeated the Mechanist quickly, without any mission-breaking glitchs. I was running very low on ammo, but Ada managed to actually do quite a bit of damage, and even finished off the Mechanist for me. I had fully upgraded her with all Assualtron parts, laser head; hydraulic armor; and duel fire ball hurling hand-cannons. It was fitting, considering the fact that Ada wanted revenge for the death of her group. I felt a little bad for killing the Mechanist, because perhaps I could have avoided the fight through diplomacy. But I was already pretty annoyed that I had to face her 5 times from the glitchs, so I felt compelled to eliminate her. Moreover, I was more sympathetic towards Ada's cause. After that, we killed off the rouge bots, and that's where I left it.

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It's really not that bad of a game. But, not amazing either. I found it to be very middle of the road. Thankfully though a lot of my gripes have been fixed thanks to mods. For me though Fallout 3 is still my favorite of the Bethesda era Fallout games.

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