So Bioshock is apparently a permanent franchise for Take 2, which got me thinking, moment to moment, Bioshock and Fallout are pretty much the same game. Rifle through trash and loot everything worth picking up. Fight dudes however you please, depending on your talent build.
It really wouldn't take all too much to expand the gameplay loop of Bioshock into a Fallout-like experience (fallacy of the year probably), all it'd take is an open world and systems over systems supporting that kind of thing, but yeah, I'd be super excited for a Fallout-style open world Bioshock game. A splice of both, if you will. Wouldn't that be exciting?
+4
Options
TIFunkaliciousKicking back inNebraskaRegistered Userregular
It's a shame I haven't found any tattoo books because the harness clothing with all the metal armor pieces has a pretty good Tank Girl look going on
So is there anywhere to buy power armor parts? I've got like a 1.5 sets of x-01 and I'd like to make that 2 sets so I can just roll in a posse with 'em.
Also skill checks are the dumbest fucking thing a game with a save and load feature can have, all it does is force you to re-load a few times to get it done or completely fuck you over for no reason when you don't. They only make sense when you can't save or are linked to a predetermined random seed(see X-com).
Skill locks (meaning things you can't do without having the perk or SPECIAL score) on the other hand make a lot more sense and force a player to invest in a wanted build.
I think this is a bit of a straw man, maybe unintentionally. The kind of skill checks everyone wants are the ones that were in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the "skill locks" you're talking about. I'd still call them skill checks because the game is checking if your Medicine is 30 or above or whatever. The only thing in recent games that's been a percent chance that can be save scummed is persuasion (speech) in 3 and 4. New Vegas speech had specific numerical requirements, Speech 30 to say such and such persuasive thing etc. I think most people prefer the specific requirement to being able to save scum through it.
In Fallout 3 you wander about the world ignoring a badly designed main quest in favor of randomly exploring the world and the interesting mini stories you can find in what used to be Washington DC, learning about this area as it is and as it was when the bombs fell. There a mutated humans and animals, a bunch of nameless raiders, and robots that you kill for loot. Sometimes named raiders will drop magic weapons, or you will find them in a box. Also, you get a dog that never dies because you reload your last save whenever it does.
In New Vegas you wander about the world ignoring a badly designed main quest in favor of randomly exploring the world and the interesting mini stories you can find in what used to be the Las Vegas area, learning about this area as it is and as it was when the bombs fell. There a mutated humans and animals, a bunch of nameless members of different gangs, and robots that you kill for loot. Sometimes named raiders will drop magic weapons, or you will find them in a box. Also, you get a robot dog, that never dies because you run around with a sniper named Boone.
In Fallout 4 you wander about the world ignoring a badly designed main quest in favor of randomly exploring the world and the interesting mini stories you can find in what used to be the Boston area, learning about this area as it is and as it was when the bombs fell. There a mutated humans and animals, a bunch of nameless raiders and Gunners, and robots that you kill for loot and junk. Sometimes legendary raiders/creatures will drop magic weapons, or you will find them in a box. Also, you get a dog that never dies.
I just don't see how people can argue that this isn't a Fallout as hell Fallout game.
Well, sure, if you strip away all the nuance of the complaints people may have expressed, they make no sense.
And just because we have been complaining about some things since Fallout 3, does not mean they suddenly stop being complaint worthy at Fallout 4.
I'm not saying there aren't things to complain about, boy howdy are there things to complain about, from bugs to dialog to more bugs to unobtainable play methods to area designs to massive bugs to AI to even more bugs, etc. It's just the complaint about the game not being 'Fallout' enough that I don't understand, because to me the game seems just as Fallouty as Fallout can be.
Packs of enemies are too dense. Fallout games in the past, generally speaking, contextualize even minor encounters and rarely put more than a handful of enemies together except in cases where the intent is to gate an area off or provide an extremely challenging fight.
Fallout games have never, ever felt as much like corridor shooters as FO4 does in certain areas. This is in keeping with the franchise's theme and appreciation for the authenticity of the setting; random mooks being littered everywhere and coming out of clown car spawns in waves doesn't make any sense.
Being a talky character is not really possible, partly because not enough missions allow for it and partly because of the afore-mentioned problem of the map being packed with enemy pods that are unprecedented for the franchise.
The VO work, while brilliant, has forced a concession out of the dialog trees. I feel like I have learned a lot less about the motivations of the people involved in the story (although I have to say that BethSoft did a great job of attempting to compensate for this with plentiful logs & terminals) and been less able to explore my own character's motivations.
Like, when the reveal came, I completely rejected that Sean was my son at that point. Even if his story were true, 'son' is more than just some label.
But that wasn't a dialog option (that I know of). Why not? It seems like a straight-forward enough assessment for many players.
Also, re: legendary items - previous Fallout games have given such items interesting background fluff and context. You don't just randomly find the Mysterious Magnum or That Gun or Maria or The All American; they are put in places that make sense and often have accompanying background documentation.
Even the placed legendary items in FO4 seem rather bland & random by comparison, whereas the procedural weaponry feels like drops you'd get in Borderlands, which has never been a Fallout thing, ever.
If you felt this game was too 'corridor shooter' then I invite you to navigate the subways of the Capital Wasteland again. Or if the packs of enemies were too dense, then play New Vegas again and clear a building. The ONLY place where I felt there were too many enemies was Corvega, and that place is the horrible exception.
I agree completley with your VO and dialog tree opinions, those were definately problems.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
The legendary system feels like a fantasy enchantment system. Why it's even applied to a Fallout game of all things, I couldn't say. The least they could do is place them manually instead of as drops, and provide some little blurbs for each explaining them. Instead we get nonsensical magic crap like nukes that heal dropping off random mobs.
Actually, I posted that healing Fat Man picture...IIRC it can't actually drop in the game, the healing legendary mod never drops, someone hacked it in.
I think the least realistic thing that drops is the infinite ammo weaponry. Most everything else I can rationalize in some way. Protects you more against animals, that sort of thing, I could see that.
That mod doesn't give you infinite ammo. It means you never have to reload. Which, in a world with nuclear warhead missile launchers, I don't have a problem with at all. Maybe it's just fed on a long ammo chain through a backpack or something? On the scale of riduculous things, this is something you can actually make in the real world.
I'm also not really feeling the complaints, but I have way over 200 hours in fallout 3 and NV according to steam (there was a reset in there somewhere I'm sure) as well as over 500 in Skyrim. I knew what I was getting, and I love it. And for the record, I found the main questline in NV to be fantastic and imaginative. I also don't remember FO 1 and 2 for their critical paths, but the cool shit you find along the way. I'm genuinely sorry if people aren't digging this experience, but I feel it's very consistent with FO overall.
The complaints about using the engine just kind of smack of an inadequate knowledge of what's going on. Bethesda developers are artists. The gamebryo engine is their brush. Yes, the engine has it's quirks, but if you think the team working with an entirely new engine wouldn't hamper their abilities, as well as introducing a truckload of bugs, well, you're just being extremely naive.
Derrick on
Steam and CFN: Enexemander
+6
Options
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Also skill checks are the dumbest fucking thing a game with a save and load feature can have, all it does is force you to re-load a few times to get it done or completely fuck you over for no reason when you don't. They only make sense when you can't save or are linked to a predetermined random seed(see X-com).
Skill locks (meaning things you can't do without having the perk or SPECIAL score) on the other hand make a lot more sense and force a player to invest in a wanted build.
I think this is a bit of a straw man, maybe unintentionally. The kind of skill checks everyone wants are the ones that were in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the "skill locks" you're talking about. I'd still call them skill checks because the game is checking if your Medicine is 30 or above or whatever. The only thing in recent games that's been a percent chance that can be save scummed is persuasion (speech) in 3 and 4. New Vegas speech had specific numerical requirements, Speech 30 to say such and such persuasive thing etc. I think most people prefer the specific requirement to being able to save scum through it.
What I dislike is when (and it happens in a bunch of different games) they show you a speech check dialog option, but it is grayed out or what have you because you don't meet the requirement. That always irritates me. I like it better when the dialog option just doesn't show up at all if I don't meet the requirement.
As to Fallout 4, I'd say it isn't the game's fault people are save scumming. When I'm playing a tabletop game and get a shitty roll I don't say "Fuck that, I'm rolling again." Just because you can game the system doesn't mean you have to game the system. Though believe you me I can certainly understand wanting to sometimes, but I normally just roll with the punches.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
If you felt this game was too 'corridor shooter' then I invite you to navigate the subways of the Capital Wasteland again. Or if the packs of enemies were too dense, then play New Vegas again and clear a building. The ONLY place where I felt there were too many enemies was Corvega, and that place is the horrible exception.
I agree completley with your VO and dialog tree opinions, those were definately problems.
I have played NV recently; even Caesar's fort is not nearly as dense as any random enemy pod in Boston.
D.C.'s subways were not corridor shooters at all; they were mostly full of Ghouls, and those enemies were a turkey shoot. A comparable engagement might be the trenches in front of the Capitol Building, but that was intended as an extremely epic late game running gun battle in a largely open area.
ArcJet Systems and Fort Hagen may as well have been light gun games. Enemies with no rhyme nor reason for their placement pouring out of hallways in front of you because 'lol this is a video game and this is how video games work'.
And it's straight-up pants-on-head that within this universe, The Institute not only has a bunch of terminators, but said terminators are so disposable that they can be expended in wave attacks. That part of the setting is never explained, either!
However. While under its effects, and having maxed Big Leagues, I currently have a Machete that does 333 damage per swing.
Jesus.
I also noticed that melee weapons get a HUGE benefit from crafting. Like this switchblade goes from 13 damage to 45 or something dumb like that - and that's before the 10x sneak attack bonus, the critical damage bonuses, the 100% bonus for big leagues...
Does anyone know if Ricochet can bounce lasers or missiles back? I know machinegun turrets can kill themselves with it. Kidna wondering what the mechanics are -- is it a chance on each shot fired, or each successful hit? I.e., can I hide in cover and wait for the deaths?
Ricochet level 1 doesn't fire off very often. About 4 times so far this playthrough. But when it does it's great -- had a skulled boss raider in some random encampment turn, try to shoot me, and ended up taking off his own powerarmor encrusted head with a shotgun. But it's rare.
The real important thing is that it might work in case you get stuck in a death loop, just reload until the perk fires off and kills the guy shooting at you.
Hit level 11. Got Idiot Savant 2 immediately. Holy shit. 5x XP at random. And you can save/load to pull shenanigans like the final hit on a boss, or the rewards from a quest. It's awesome.
However. While under its effects, and having maxed Big Leagues, I currently have a Machete that does 333 damage per swing.
Jesus.
I also noticed that melee weapons get a HUGE benefit from crafting. Like this switchblade goes from 13 damage to 45 or something dumb like that - and that's before the 10x sneak attack bonus, the critical damage bonuses, the 100% bonus for big leagues...
Does anyone know if Ricochet can bounce lasers or missiles back? I know machinegun turrets can kill themselves with it. Kidna wondering what the mechanics are -- is it a chance on each shot fired, or each successful hit? I.e., can I hide in cover and wait for the deaths?
Ricochet level 1 doesn't fire off very often. About 4 times so far this playthrough. But when it does it's great -- had a skulled boss raider in some random encampment turn, try to shoot me, and ended up taking off his own powerarmor encrusted head with a shotgun. But it's rare.
The real important thing is that it might work in case you get stuck in a death loop, just reload until the perk fires off and kills the guy shooting at you.
Hit level 11. Got Idiot Savant 2 immediately. Holy shit. 5x XP at random. And you can save/load to pull shenanigans like the final hit on a boss, or the rewards from a quest. It's awesome.
Ricochet provides maybe the worst value in the game (it might slightly edge out Mysterious Stranger). It almost never procs, even at rank 3; it can exclusively proc against non-explosive ranged attacks; it instantly kills the attacker, but won't trigger kill procs like GRS.
Also skill checks are the dumbest fucking thing a game with a save and load feature can have, all it does is force you to re-load a few times to get it done or completely fuck you over for no reason when you don't. They only make sense when you can't save or are linked to a predetermined random seed(see X-com).
Skill locks (meaning things you can't do without having the perk or SPECIAL score) on the other hand make a lot more sense and force a player to invest in a wanted build.
I think this is a bit of a straw man, maybe unintentionally. The kind of skill checks everyone wants are the ones that were in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the "skill locks" you're talking about. I'd still call them skill checks because the game is checking if your Medicine is 30 or above or whatever. The only thing in recent games that's been a percent chance that can be save scummed is persuasion (speech) in 3 and 4. New Vegas speech had specific numerical requirements, Speech 30 to say such and such persuasive thing etc. I think most people prefer the specific requirement to being able to save scum through it.
While I do miss the skill requirements I think Bethesda went in the right direction. Removing skills in favor of just having perks and special means that special stats are no longer pointless. And it allows for a wider range of perk structures.
I suppose they could have done a "perk requirement" thing but I bet people would have complained about that. There are too many disparate perks and too much ability to acquire low rank perks for a "total number" check.
Stuff about the density of enemies is not right. Every fallout has been super dense with enemies. And random groups of dense enemies unless you were skilled for survival. And packs of dense enemies in specific locations.
If you felt this game was too 'corridor shooter' then I invite you to navigate the subways of the Capital Wasteland again. Or if the packs of enemies were too dense, then play New Vegas again and clear a building. The ONLY place where I felt there were too many enemies was Corvega, and that place is the horrible exception.
I agree completley with your VO and dialog tree opinions, those were definately problems.
I have played NV recently; even Caesar's fort is not nearly as dense as any random enemy pod in Boston.
D.C.'s subways were not corridor shooters at all; they were mostly full of Ghouls, and those enemies were a turkey shoot. A comparable engagement might be the trenches in front of the Capitol Building, but that was intended as an extremely epic late game running gun battle in a largely open area.
ArcJet Systems and Fort Hagen may as well have been light gun games. Enemies with no rhyme nor reason for their placement pouring out of hallways in front of you because 'lol this is a video game and this is how video games work'.
And it's straight-up pants-on-head that within this universe, The Institute not only has a bunch of terminators, but said terminators are so disposable that they can be expended in wave attacks. That part of the setting is never explained, either!
Uh, I played New Vegas the day before Fallout 4 came out. Killed every asshole in Caesar's Legion. There are a lot of them. That fort especially has a MASSIVE number of enemies. The packs of enemy density feels extremely similar, although there are exceptions. Regarding your spoiler:
Making big fancy terminators is risky and expensive. If you need to get something from an area, cheap dudes with guns is a better idea. Especially given the story spoilers of how they move around and whatnot. They specifically mention having to test things and work on newer models and how some of those went nuts. It's not as easy as "why are all these super terminators disposable" because they're not all super terminators for a reason.
I think there would be a place for a separate skill system* in this, but regardless of how they implemented it mechanically, it was the effect of skill checks that is what mattered - and that often seems to be what is lacking in Fallout 4.
Specifically, while the game has tremendous breadth, it often lacks meaningful depth. Before I get any further into this, I am going to just say: Yes, it's a video game, there is a finite amount they can program in, you will never have the range of choices or solutions that you could get in, say, a tabletop RPG. Let's set that aside.
In many previous Fallout games, and certainly in other RPGs, there were alternative solutions to quests gated by your character's specific capabilities. Say, for example, you need to ingratiate yourself with a town. If you're a violent character, you go kill the raiders bothering them. But if your character was a doctor, you could treat their sick. Two solutions, both of which reflected what "your character" could and/or would do.
That stuff is great and pretty essential to the Fallout RPG feel. Fallout can be a great open-world shooter without losing the great RPG elements, but Fallout 4 is the waaaaay too far on the former and far too little on the latter. Doesn't mean it's a bad game or not a Fallout game (what would that even mean?) but it is disappointing. It's a shame that a game with so much emphasis on choice and flexibility doesn't have that reflected in quest outcomes and character interaction to a much higher degree. I don't just want to control where I go, and pick up every roll of duct tape, I want to have some say in what my reputation is with other groups, what my relationship is with key allies, how given situations are resolved. Sometimes all it takes is two or three options to give that illusion of choice - early on you can help the vendor at Drumlin or help the drug dealers, for example, violently or non-violently. That sort of thing. More of that.
*I would make it a "you have the skill or you don't system." Say there are nine or ten skills, you tag three at character creation, you could tag another with a perk, and you always "succeed" at whatever the skill check is. Maybe sometimes gated by special equipment (leverage for Speech, a Doctor's Bag for Medicine, Electronic Lockpicks for special doors, etc) if necessary, but the double-gating of both taking the skill and then advancing the skill is unnecessary and interferes; you're either a Doctor or you're not, assume some level of competence, then reflect skill choices in the game as much as you can.
+5
Options
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
@jdarksun Another tip for the OP from Reddit: You can customize the appearance of NPCs.
Also skill checks are the dumbest fucking thing a game with a save and load feature can have, all it does is force you to re-load a few times to get it done or completely fuck you over for no reason when you don't. They only make sense when you can't save or are linked to a predetermined random seed(see X-com).
Skill locks (meaning things you can't do without having the perk or SPECIAL score) on the other hand make a lot more sense and force a player to invest in a wanted build.
I think this is a bit of a straw man, maybe unintentionally. The kind of skill checks everyone wants are the ones that were in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the "skill locks" you're talking about. I'd still call them skill checks because the game is checking if your Medicine is 30 or above or whatever. The only thing in recent games that's been a percent chance that can be save scummed is persuasion (speech) in 3 and 4. New Vegas speech had specific numerical requirements, Speech 30 to say such and such persuasive thing etc. I think most people prefer the specific requirement to being able to save scum through it.
While I do miss the skill requirements I think Bethesda went in the right direction. Removing skills in favor of just having perks and special means that special stats are no longer pointless. And it allows for a wider range of perk structures.
I suppose they could have done a "perk requirement" thing but I bet people would have complained about that. There are too many disparate perks and too much ability to acquire low rank perks for a "total number" check.
Stuff about the density of enemies is not right. Every fallout has been super dense with enemies. And random groups of dense enemies unless you were skilled for survival. And packs of dense enemies in specific locations.
The complaint is valid in the case of ghouls, but they are a swarm enemy by design. I also get the feeling the new ghoul mechanic is closely tied to the greater fluidity in shooting and the introduction of movement in VATS. They are a showcase for what the engine can now do with smoother shooting.
The other notable exception is the super mutants, but that is tied to the way they've been restructured to be a threat to multiple playstyles. Between the hounds, melee mutants, suiciders that flush out snipers at range, and threats from rifles, missiles and laser guns, you have to play fast and nimble to beat a mob of them. That dynamic only works if you have a good force of mutants.
Otherwise, the number of raiders and monster enemies feel about the same as they did in the older games. You usually get a handful of mirelurks, deathclaws, robots, etc. at a time. Raider force size depends on the location and situation.
If anything, I'm not seeing as many mobs of beasts like you did with things like salamanders and cazadores in the older games. You are usually talking groups of three to four.
The game does rely on waves of enemies in missions and with certain enemies more than the older Fallouts. It also has made updates to the engine that make wave enemies more manageable than they would have been in the past, so it makes sense that they've added them to their gameplay arsenal.
I just go with sarcasm as my default for everything now.
Just got tired of people being like "are you sure you can handle this? it's really dangerous and you look weak" just after I went all Rambo on a building full of super mutants or completed their last "impossible, this is suicide" mission.
The complaints about using the engine just kind of smack of an inadequate knowledge of what's going on. Bethesda developers are artists. The gamebryo engine is their brush. Yes, the engine has it's quirks, but if you think the team working with an entirely new engine wouldn't hamper their abilities, as well as introducing a truckload of bugs, well, you're just being extremely naive.
This already happened with New Vegas. Very bug. Wow.
*I would make it a "you have the skill or you don't system." Say there are nine or ten skills, you tag three at character creation, you could tag another with a perk, and you always "succeed" at whatever the skill check is. Maybe sometimes gated by special equipment (leverage for Speech, a Doctor's Bag for Medicine, Electronic Lockpicks for special doors, etc) if necessary, but the double-gating of both taking the skill and then advancing the skill is unnecessary and interferes; you're either a Doctor or you're not, assume some level of competence, then reflect skill choices in the game as much as you can.
Now I'm sad this isn't the case. Maybe a background option during character creation? Choose if your character was ex-military, a doctor, a psychologist, etc, and have checks keyed off the knowledge your character has in the approproate field.
Percentage check to CHA for every single check is one of the worst things about the game.
I just go with sarcasm as my default for everything now.
Just got tired of people being like "are you sure you can handle this? it's really dangerous and you look weak" just after I went all Rambo on a building full of super mutants or completed their last "impossible, this is suicide" mission.
I like using that option myself aswell but I hate how it's hard to tell when you're using it to be an asshole to an npc or just to crack a friendly joke.
Skills are a red herring. Whether skills are in the game or not is missing the point. It's putting the option-carriage before the skill-horse.
The old games let you do things for having this build or that build, and for having been to that place, or talked to this dude, or done the quest over there.
Skills are a red herring. Whether skills are in the game or not is missing the point. It's putting the option-carriage before the skill-horse.
The old games let you do things for having this build or that build, and for having been to that place, or talked to this dude, or done the quest over there.
Skills don't matter.
They don't matter.
Right? What really matters is resolution options for quests, to feel like the freedom the game has extends to the narrative as well as gameplay. Doesn't mean every quest needs ten different ways to resolve it, but it'd be nice if there was just more ways to tackle situations than how you choose to kill everything.
Also, re: legendary items - previous Fallout games have given such items interesting background fluff and context. You don't just randomly find the Mysterious Magnum or That Gun or Maria or The All American; they are put in places that make sense and often have accompanying background documentation.
Even the placed legendary items in FO4 seem rather bland & random by comparison, whereas the procedural weaponry feels like drops you'd get in Borderlands, which has never been a Fallout thing, ever.
I disagree with this, in terms of context at least. You don't just randomly find most uniques in this game, they're all given a lot of good context, or at least as good as in previous games. Weapons like:
Pickman's Blade, Righteous Authority, the Junk Jet, Kellogg's Pistol, the Broadsider, the Deliverer, the Syringer, Ashmaker, Prototype UP77, the Shishkebab, Grognak's Axe, the Alien Blaster, Kremvh’s Tooth...
All are significant quest rewards or have an area built around them. One of my favorites is Prototype UP77, it's not a quest item or anything, but you do stumble upon it while doing something else, and there's a lot of great context in the area. Really fun to find.
Honestly there are a large amount of unique weapons in the game, more than I would've thought.
It's true that many of them don't have unique modifiers on them that can't be also gained from legendaries, but those are random drops. And some of them are totally unique anyway.
Found exactly... two legendaries so far in my hardest difficulty playthrough?
What I *am* noticing is gear is significantly higher modded on this difficulty. Finding things that have 3 or 4 mods, all of which require 2 or 3 (and occasionally 4) gun nut / science / etc. Not sure if this is all in my head or not.
So is there anywhere to buy power armor parts? I've got like a 1.5 sets of x-01 and I'd like to make that 2 sets so I can just roll in a posse with 'em.
I just go with sarcasm as my default for everything now.
Just got tired of people being like "are you sure you can handle this? it's really dangerous and you look weak" just after I went all Rambo on a building full of super mutants or completed their last "impossible, this is suicide" mission.
I like using that option myself aswell but I hate how it's hard to tell when you're using it to be an asshole to an npc or just to crack a friendly joke.
I used sarcasm button a few times, but i rarely got any sarcasm, mostly it was just pure assholery, and not even funny kind of assholery.
7 days of playtime, level 60, if not all, then most settlements opened and heavily secured.
and suddenly i am filled with the temptation of scrapping it all and starting over to get better specials without needing perks for them.
If i cheat to get the bobbleheads from the start, i could get all the stats i need from beginning for the perks i'd need, without having to waste perk points for them (had to use 2 for more agility).
sure i would start with lowest possible endurance and luck, but it's not like i intend to get hit that much anyway.
I just go with sarcasm as my default for everything now.
Just got tired of people being like "are you sure you can handle this? it's really dangerous and you look weak" just after I went all Rambo on a building full of super mutants or completed their last "impossible, this is suicide" mission.
I like using that option myself aswell but I hate how it's hard to tell when you're using it to be an asshole to an npc or just to crack a friendly joke.
I used sarcasm button a few times, but i rarely got any sarcasm, mostly it was just pure assholery, and not even funny kind of assholery.
Asshole worked for me too, Every faction in this game sorta sucks and is led by an ass, so a little backtalk works.
plus, game spoilers
your whole reason in the game leads to an ass for a son who deserves to die, you have no reason for any hope for the world.
Might as well just be an asshole and figure out the best way to burn everything to the ground.
Institute are basically just Enclave except robots instead of power armor, so they gotta die
Railroad are idiots who care for nothing but freeing robots and be damned if their processes sometimes fuck up said robots and make them go all murder spree
BOS don't give a shit about people, just want more tech
Minutemen are ok I guess, but Garvey annoys me and settlements are tiring
Also, re: legendary items - previous Fallout games have given such items interesting background fluff and context. You don't just randomly find the Mysterious Magnum or That Gun or Maria or The All American; they are put in places that make sense and often have accompanying background documentation.
Even the placed legendary items in FO4 seem rather bland & random by comparison, whereas the procedural weaponry feels like drops you'd get in Borderlands, which has never been a Fallout thing, ever.
I disagree with this, in terms of context at least. You don't just randomly find most uniques in this game, they're all given a lot of good context, or at least as good as in previous games. Weapons like:
Pickman's Blade, Righteous Authority, the Junk Jet, Kellogg's Pistol, the Broadsider, the Deliverer, the Syringer, Ashmaker, Prototype UP77, the Shishkebab, Grognak's Axe, the Alien Blaster, Kremvh’s Tooth...
All are significant quest rewards or have an area built around them. One of my favorites is Prototype UP77, it's not a quest item or anything, but you do stumble upon it while doing something else, and there's a lot of great context in the area. Really fun to find.
Honestly there are a large amount of unique weapons in the game, more than I would've thought.
It's true that many of them don't have unique modifiers on them that can't be also gained from legendaries, but those are random drops. And some of them are totally unique anyway.
My favorite so far was an incendiary .44. You find a door in a concrete platform in the world that leads you to a pretty simple puzzle. Inside the room locked by the puzzle is a charred, bloodied skeleton and the .44 lying on the ground next to it.
Did anyone else find the treasure, and then leave everything there? I saw that the baseball bat had a star on it when I moused over it, but after listening to what it was all about, it felt kind of wrong to loot anything, so I just closed the room up again.
Posts
I swear it has nothing to do with my planned sociopath run.
It really wouldn't take all too much to expand the gameplay loop of Bioshock into a Fallout-like experience (fallacy of the year probably), all it'd take is an open world and systems over systems supporting that kind of thing, but yeah, I'd be super excited for a Fallout-style open world Bioshock game. A splice of both, if you will. Wouldn't that be exciting?
I think this is a bit of a straw man, maybe unintentionally. The kind of skill checks everyone wants are the ones that were in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the "skill locks" you're talking about. I'd still call them skill checks because the game is checking if your Medicine is 30 or above or whatever. The only thing in recent games that's been a percent chance that can be save scummed is persuasion (speech) in 3 and 4. New Vegas speech had specific numerical requirements, Speech 30 to say such and such persuasive thing etc. I think most people prefer the specific requirement to being able to save scum through it.
Packs of enemies are too dense. Fallout games in the past, generally speaking, contextualize even minor encounters and rarely put more than a handful of enemies together except in cases where the intent is to gate an area off or provide an extremely challenging fight.
Fallout games have never, ever felt as much like corridor shooters as FO4 does in certain areas. This is in keeping with the franchise's theme and appreciation for the authenticity of the setting; random mooks being littered everywhere and coming out of clown car spawns in waves doesn't make any sense.
Being a talky character is not really possible, partly because not enough missions allow for it and partly because of the afore-mentioned problem of the map being packed with enemy pods that are unprecedented for the franchise.
The VO work, while brilliant, has forced a concession out of the dialog trees. I feel like I have learned a lot less about the motivations of the people involved in the story (although I have to say that BethSoft did a great job of attempting to compensate for this with plentiful logs & terminals) and been less able to explore my own character's motivations.
But that wasn't a dialog option (that I know of). Why not? It seems like a straight-forward enough assessment for many players.
Also, re: legendary items - previous Fallout games have given such items interesting background fluff and context. You don't just randomly find the Mysterious Magnum or That Gun or Maria or The All American; they are put in places that make sense and often have accompanying background documentation.
Even the placed legendary items in FO4 seem rather bland & random by comparison, whereas the procedural weaponry feels like drops you'd get in Borderlands, which has never been a Fallout thing, ever.
I agree completley with your VO and dialog tree opinions, those were definately problems.
That mod doesn't give you infinite ammo. It means you never have to reload. Which, in a world with nuclear warhead missile launchers, I don't have a problem with at all. Maybe it's just fed on a long ammo chain through a backpack or something? On the scale of riduculous things, this is something you can actually make in the real world.
I'm also not really feeling the complaints, but I have way over 200 hours in fallout 3 and NV according to steam (there was a reset in there somewhere I'm sure) as well as over 500 in Skyrim. I knew what I was getting, and I love it. And for the record, I found the main questline in NV to be fantastic and imaginative. I also don't remember FO 1 and 2 for their critical paths, but the cool shit you find along the way. I'm genuinely sorry if people aren't digging this experience, but I feel it's very consistent with FO overall.
The complaints about using the engine just kind of smack of an inadequate knowledge of what's going on. Bethesda developers are artists. The gamebryo engine is their brush. Yes, the engine has it's quirks, but if you think the team working with an entirely new engine wouldn't hamper their abilities, as well as introducing a truckload of bugs, well, you're just being extremely naive.
What I dislike is when (and it happens in a bunch of different games) they show you a speech check dialog option, but it is grayed out or what have you because you don't meet the requirement. That always irritates me. I like it better when the dialog option just doesn't show up at all if I don't meet the requirement.
As to Fallout 4, I'd say it isn't the game's fault people are save scumming. When I'm playing a tabletop game and get a shitty roll I don't say "Fuck that, I'm rolling again." Just because you can game the system doesn't mean you have to game the system. Though believe you me I can certainly understand wanting to sometimes, but I normally just roll with the punches.
I have played NV recently; even Caesar's fort is not nearly as dense as any random enemy pod in Boston.
D.C.'s subways were not corridor shooters at all; they were mostly full of Ghouls, and those enemies were a turkey shoot. A comparable engagement might be the trenches in front of the Capitol Building, but that was intended as an extremely epic late game running gun battle in a largely open area.
And it's straight-up pants-on-head that within this universe, The Institute not only has a bunch of terminators, but said terminators are so disposable that they can be expended in wave attacks. That part of the setting is never explained, either!
Jesus.
I also noticed that melee weapons get a HUGE benefit from crafting. Like this switchblade goes from 13 damage to 45 or something dumb like that - and that's before the 10x sneak attack bonus, the critical damage bonuses, the 100% bonus for big leagues...
Does anyone know if Ricochet can bounce lasers or missiles back? I know machinegun turrets can kill themselves with it. Kidna wondering what the mechanics are -- is it a chance on each shot fired, or each successful hit? I.e., can I hide in cover and wait for the deaths?
Ricochet level 1 doesn't fire off very often. About 4 times so far this playthrough. But when it does it's great -- had a skulled boss raider in some random encampment turn, try to shoot me, and ended up taking off his own powerarmor encrusted head with a shotgun. But it's rare.
The real important thing is that it might work in case you get stuck in a death loop, just reload until the perk fires off and kills the guy shooting at you.
Hit level 11. Got Idiot Savant 2 immediately. Holy shit. 5x XP at random. And you can save/load to pull shenanigans like the final hit on a boss, or the rewards from a quest. It's awesome.
Ricochet provides maybe the worst value in the game (it might slightly edge out Mysterious Stranger). It almost never procs, even at rank 3; it can exclusively proc against non-explosive ranged attacks; it instantly kills the attacker, but won't trigger kill procs like GRS.
Super disappointing.
While I do miss the skill requirements I think Bethesda went in the right direction. Removing skills in favor of just having perks and special means that special stats are no longer pointless. And it allows for a wider range of perk structures.
I suppose they could have done a "perk requirement" thing but I bet people would have complained about that. There are too many disparate perks and too much ability to acquire low rank perks for a "total number" check.
Stuff about the density of enemies is not right. Every fallout has been super dense with enemies. And random groups of dense enemies unless you were skilled for survival. And packs of dense enemies in specific locations.
Uh, I played New Vegas the day before Fallout 4 came out. Killed every asshole in Caesar's Legion. There are a lot of them. That fort especially has a MASSIVE number of enemies. The packs of enemy density feels extremely similar, although there are exceptions. Regarding your spoiler:
Seems pretty consistent to me.
Specifically, while the game has tremendous breadth, it often lacks meaningful depth. Before I get any further into this, I am going to just say: Yes, it's a video game, there is a finite amount they can program in, you will never have the range of choices or solutions that you could get in, say, a tabletop RPG. Let's set that aside.
In many previous Fallout games, and certainly in other RPGs, there were alternative solutions to quests gated by your character's specific capabilities. Say, for example, you need to ingratiate yourself with a town. If you're a violent character, you go kill the raiders bothering them. But if your character was a doctor, you could treat their sick. Two solutions, both of which reflected what "your character" could and/or would do.
That stuff is great and pretty essential to the Fallout RPG feel. Fallout can be a great open-world shooter without losing the great RPG elements, but Fallout 4 is the waaaaay too far on the former and far too little on the latter. Doesn't mean it's a bad game or not a Fallout game (what would that even mean?) but it is disappointing. It's a shame that a game with so much emphasis on choice and flexibility doesn't have that reflected in quest outcomes and character interaction to a much higher degree. I don't just want to control where I go, and pick up every roll of duct tape, I want to have some say in what my reputation is with other groups, what my relationship is with key allies, how given situations are resolved. Sometimes all it takes is two or three options to give that illusion of choice - early on you can help the vendor at Drumlin or help the drug dealers, for example, violently or non-violently. That sort of thing. More of that.
*I would make it a "you have the skill or you don't system." Say there are nine or ten skills, you tag three at character creation, you could tag another with a perk, and you always "succeed" at whatever the skill check is. Maybe sometimes gated by special equipment (leverage for Speech, a Doctor's Bag for Medicine, Electronic Lockpicks for special doors, etc) if necessary, but the double-gating of both taking the skill and then advancing the skill is unnecessary and interferes; you're either a Doctor or you're not, assume some level of competence, then reflect skill choices in the game as much as you can.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3uhvmg/til_the_command_showlooksmenu_id_1_will_let_you/
The complaint is valid in the case of ghouls, but they are a swarm enemy by design. I also get the feeling the new ghoul mechanic is closely tied to the greater fluidity in shooting and the introduction of movement in VATS. They are a showcase for what the engine can now do with smoother shooting.
The other notable exception is the super mutants, but that is tied to the way they've been restructured to be a threat to multiple playstyles. Between the hounds, melee mutants, suiciders that flush out snipers at range, and threats from rifles, missiles and laser guns, you have to play fast and nimble to beat a mob of them. That dynamic only works if you have a good force of mutants.
Otherwise, the number of raiders and monster enemies feel about the same as they did in the older games. You usually get a handful of mirelurks, deathclaws, robots, etc. at a time. Raider force size depends on the location and situation.
If anything, I'm not seeing as many mobs of beasts like you did with things like salamanders and cazadores in the older games. You are usually talking groups of three to four.
The game does rely on waves of enemies in missions and with certain enemies more than the older Fallouts. It also has made updates to the engine that make wave enemies more manageable than they would have been in the past, so it makes sense that they've added them to their gameplay arsenal.
Tried this in the past. Unfortunately it resets their face, so you can't just change their hair alone.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Sooo nice to have. No more [SARCASM].
Wha? Lame.
I just go with sarcasm as my default for everything now.
Just got tired of people being like "are you sure you can handle this? it's really dangerous and you look weak" just after I went all Rambo on a building full of super mutants or completed their last "impossible, this is suicide" mission.
This already happened with New Vegas. Very bug. Wow.
The problem after I started running that mod, is that it made abundantly clear how the dialogue is totally superfluous 90% of the time.
"Please help me with the thing"
1) Of course, let's go
2) The thing? Sure, let's go
3) Whatever the thing is, we'll kill it. Let's roll.
4) Capz plz
Now I'm sad this isn't the case. Maybe a background option during character creation? Choose if your character was ex-military, a doctor, a psychologist, etc, and have checks keyed off the knowledge your character has in the approproate field.
Percentage check to CHA for every single check is one of the worst things about the game.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Wonder... if I clean it out now, will they respawn when the quest starts?
Edit: Haha, I wonder how this will change things...
The old games let you do things for having this build or that build, and for having been to that place, or talked to this dude, or done the quest over there.
Skills don't matter.
They don't matter.
Right? What really matters is resolution options for quests, to feel like the freedom the game has extends to the narrative as well as gameplay. Doesn't mean every quest needs ten different ways to resolve it, but it'd be nice if there was just more ways to tackle situations than how you choose to kill everything.
Yes.
I disagree with this, in terms of context at least. You don't just randomly find most uniques in this game, they're all given a lot of good context, or at least as good as in previous games. Weapons like:
All are significant quest rewards or have an area built around them. One of my favorites is Prototype UP77, it's not a quest item or anything, but you do stumble upon it while doing something else, and there's a lot of great context in the area. Really fun to find.
Honestly there are a large amount of unique weapons in the game, more than I would've thought.
It's true that many of them don't have unique modifiers on them that can't be also gained from legendaries, but those are random drops. And some of them are totally unique anyway.
What I *am* noticing is gear is significantly higher modded on this difficulty. Finding things that have 3 or 4 mods, all of which require 2 or 3 (and occasionally 4) gun nut / science / etc. Not sure if this is all in my head or not.
Atom's cat garage and BoS base have em.
I used sarcasm button a few times, but i rarely got any sarcasm, mostly it was just pure assholery, and not even funny kind of assholery.
and suddenly i am filled with the temptation of scrapping it all and starting over to get better specials without needing perks for them.
If i cheat to get the bobbleheads from the start, i could get all the stats i need from beginning for the perks i'd need, without having to waste perk points for them (had to use 2 for more agility).
sure i would start with lowest possible endurance and luck, but it's not like i intend to get hit that much anyway.
Asshole worked for me too, Every faction in this game sorta sucks and is led by an ass, so a little backtalk works.
plus, game spoilers
Might as well just be an asshole and figure out the best way to burn everything to the ground.
Institute are basically just Enclave except robots instead of power armor, so they gotta die
Railroad are idiots who care for nothing but freeing robots and be damned if their processes sometimes fuck up said robots and make them go all murder spree
BOS don't give a shit about people, just want more tech
Minutemen are ok I guess, but Garvey annoys me and settlements are tiring
My favorite so far was an incendiary .44. You find a door in a concrete platform in the world that leads you to a pretty simple puzzle. Inside the room locked by the puzzle is a charred, bloodied skeleton and the .44 lying on the ground next to it.