3376

I respect that is your reaction, but I have a hard time understanding it. My experience is completely different. In RPG’s, I am roleplaying a character. I would like to him to answer the way I want him to answer, even if the concrete effect does not vary. I use a mod that prints the full text of each reply when presenting the choices, and they matter to me.

That’s even more true with NPC’s. Some of them, such as Nick, Cait, Piper and even Dogmeat have very distinct personalities. They say interesting things. Heck, Deacon has made me laugh out loud a few times, “I have an idea for a new business model. You and me, we partner up with a mortuary… see where I’m going with this?” That’s good writing.

This sort of thing is important for its own sake, at least to me. More choices, more distinct endings and a world that reacts more dramatically to events you drive would absolutely be better. But I appreciate what’s there now nonetheless.

3377

I also had huge trouble with Witchers 2 combat. To the point that despite all the raves about Witcher 3, I still haven’t bought it yet. I was tempted at the last steam sale though. While Fallout 4 combat is both fun, satistifying for those of us with poor coordination. and with critical hits strategic. My first playthough (not completed) was a sniper guy using scopes. In this one, I am using gunslinger and Delivery and make heavy use of VATS But I found a legendary pipe revolver rifle and by putting a scope on it and sharpshooters grip it is now a sniper pistol and will probably remain my sniping weapons of choice unitl I can get my Int up to 6 to learn Science. But I may skip that and just do a 3rd play through focused on BOS and concentrate on energy weapons, which have a wider variety of interesting mods.

I’ve put 100+ hours in I’m still enjoying the game a lot.

All the criticism are valid. But I have confidence that between mod, UI fixes, and some balance issues it will become an exception game next year.

3378

Wow - two other people who, like me, didn’t like the combat in the Witcher series. I really thought I was the only one.

Maybe triggercut will stop giving me such a hard time about it now. Especially since I go out of my way to say how I see how wonderful a game this is for many others, but it just doesn’t fit my style.

3379

Funny man. That’s what I was trying to do, play them with mouse and keyboard. It was…awkward, to say the least. For me, at least.

3380

I really WISH I liked the combat better, because the Witcher games exude style and cool feel, and I really like a lot of the other aspects of the games.

3381

It might be possible for fans to fix the settlement system, the loot system, the crafting system and the perk system. Even if they do though, it probably isn’t going to feel like a integrated part of the game still. Even if modders pull off a miracle, i can’t really give that to Bethesda, that is the fans. Not to mention this is every new thing that bethesda added to fallout 4 to make it something beyond a very safe, incremental sequel. All* of it is deeply flawed.

*:Admittedly a few people spending a couple days going over the perks and getting rid of the ones that suck and fixing the ones that are broken would take care of the perk system. I wouldn’t be surprised if fans have this fixed even before the official mod kit comes out.

3382

While I love W3, this game has something else. I was initially bummed out by meeting the “exploration walls” quite early, I had to put 20 bullets into some guy’s head for it to matter. I went back and followed the early quests, which is obviously what they want you to do.

After a while I got the hang of it but I was using crappy pipe weapons so my time to kill was still annoying. Then I found my first combat rifle. Witcher 3 has nothing on this. The feeling of power and progression I got from finally getting rid of my pipe weapons, made me completely forget about the game’s RPG shortcomings.

As I’ve said earlier, I basically played it like a shooter with RPG elements from then on out. The emergent battles, the gun control and diversity had me fall in love. I pretty much didn’t need anything else at that point.

It wasn’t the game I expected but it was a highly entertaining game indeed and I completed it without ever losing interest.

3383

For me the key is as you note, “shooter with RPG elements.” I guess I’m not a Fallout purist, even though I loved all the original RPGs prior to the shift to 3D. My favorite game genre of all time is shooter with RPG stuff, like this, Deus Ex, System Shock, that sort of thing. My next favorite would be tactical combat focused RPGs, turn-based preferred. So Fallout, overall, has pretty much everything as a line of games that I could want.

Doesn’t mean F4 isn’t deeply flawed–as I’ve said, all the criticisms leveled against it, pretty much, I can see the merit of. Individual tastes are going to be all over the map. I read an article on the BBC about how Tolkien was excoriated by critics when Lord of the Rings came out in 1954 or whatever, and how ever since then it’s been fashionable to denigrate his stuff as childish. But many of us love his work.

3384

Interesting that you mention this. I’ve thought about it in the past, why Bethesda’s Fallouts don’t feel like Deus Ex, SS2, Dishonored or even FNV. If you compare them side by side they share a lot of mechanics and support the same playstyles, so where does the difference come from? And I don’t know how else to explain it, but when playing those games it feels like you’re climbing stairs. You start out, then you level up, get some meaningful upgrades and then you coast along until the next meaningful milestone. Bethesda’s game design feels more like an escalator in comparison, you’re traveling along a much flatter power curve, the highs that those other games provide just aren’t there. And that to me takes some excitement out of playing.

3385

That’s a deeply flawed statement :) The settlement systems is great, the only serious flaw IMO is the interface, along with the ability to easily see what task each settler is doing. It is finicky at times but it works. If it was a bad as you say it is, people wouldn’t be having so much fun with their settlements.

I’m not certain what you think the problem with the loot system is (if you have stated somewhere above, apologies for not seeing it). The addition of legendaries makes both the combat and loot more challenging and interesting. And there’s more than weapons, there’s armor too. It’s certainly more interesting than Fallout 3.

The crafting system is very cool - the fact that I can go from a simple pipe pistol, to a pipe rifle to an automatic pipe smg to pipe sniper rifle is fantastic. Or build anything from a laser pistol to laser shotgun or laser sniper. And, no, not everyone uses the double damage mod for any number of reasons - a rapid firing weapon that can stack effects such as fire or bleeding or explosions can also be good, or weapons that do 50% more damage vs. certain enemy types. And then there are the armor mods which you seem to ignore in just talking about weapons - increase protection, decrease weight, increase carrying capacity, increase stealth, etc. Lots to do here.

Perks? This is really more opinion than anything else. But I know of people using heavy charisma/intelligence builds and they are having a blast with what would oftentimes be seen as a gimped character. Are all perks equally good - no, but I think that’s a mistake to think they have to be. That’s taking a min/max perspective and not a role players perspective. Some are there more for choice and flavor than anything else but that’s fine. Not all perks need be created equal, IMO.

The biggest flaw I see you is one didn’t even mention - the conversation system. It’s too vague, and there are not enough opportunities to influence things in conversations (but having a played a good deal of the game, there are more of these than people make it out to be - you can wrap up a rescue mission without a final fight if you have talked to certain people for example). I do wish they had a speech perk with levels to allow you to influence conversations or open up new lines of dialogue.

Yes, there are things that could be better, and the things above could certainly be improved. But to say that they are all “deeply flawed” is a gross exaggeration.

3386

Fallout does things differently from Deus Ex and System Shock. Deus Ex and System Shock are more “power based” - you level up and get get a new power - cloaking, punching through walls, etc. You’re more like a superhero with new/enhanced powers. But there are far fewer weapons and weapon types. So leveling up means more because of the significant new abilities you can gain. Fallout’s abilities are less pronounced in their impact as you level up because you’re not a cyborg but a regular guy, but in Fallout you can find all sorts of cool weapons, or build them. IMO, the highs come more from new equipment rather than new abilities. You have to admit if you are honest that the loot aspect of Fallout is something the other games lack, and drives more of the highs for Fallout than new “powers”. Matter of preference in the end.

3387

The loot aspect in fallout 4 is terrible.

Yes, if you’re a gunslinger, things play out slightly differently than if you’re a rifle user, but once you’re in the “class,” not so much. With rifles you basically have shotguns and you have longer range rifles. Beyond that you can’t tell any difference (except for guass rifle which is a situational weapon). With gunslinger you have revolvers and non revolvers. Both pretty much act the same except for firing speed and reload speed. Melee and unarmed are mostly the same except there it is slow/high damage weapons and fast/low damage weapons.

As mentioned the legendary mod system is mostly broken. If you’re rifles, you get the best weapon in the game buying it from a vendor pretty early. Loot variety for melee and unarmed sucks, but on the plus side there is no double damage mod, so you actually have a couple options for weapon mod. Pistols… i’m actually not sure. You get one really good one from a quest but you could also try for a double damage one. I’d probably side with double damage.

The armor legendary mods are much better than the weapon ones in that there are a few decent options. Most people tend to end up stacking a lot of agi/per or the str version though.

Beyond balance and variety issues, the loot mods just do not change your play style at all. This is not borderlands or post patch diablo 3 and i don’t expect it to be, but at the same time, we can’t pretend it is.

3388

Absolutely. Play State of Decay. Seriously. This isn’t quantum physics. It’s game design. Plenty of people are capable of doing it better than Bethesda’s half-assed attempts. They are not some golden standard. They are below par.

Well, you’ve pretty much described any solid RPG ever. You seem to be saying, “Whoa, this game has an awesome graphics engine! How can it possibly have anything else good?” :)

There’s no need to ask for the moon in an era when the space program has been overshooting it for many years now. At that point, the moon is a baseline. Anyone delivering low-earth orbit is seriously underperforming.

-Tom

3389

You hit the nail on the head. Those games change up the gameplay every few hours, or rather enhance it by giving you new abilities.

I’m not sure I agree about the equipment in FO providing the highs though, at least as far as FO4 is concerned. FO3 had some of that because the weapons were varied and there were quite a few uniques, in FO4 all of that goes out the window. Most of the weapons within a particular class feel the same, the legendary system is pretty basic, all it does is add a random power to the gun. It feels like something you’d find in a Borderlands game, not Fallout. Mods are largely irrelevant because there are some that outclass others so badly that there’s just no point in using anything else. This really cuts down on the amount of options and once you start breaking down the system you realise that the weapon variety has been severely reduced from FO3. And if I’m being totally honest, besides the damage ranges I don’t really feel there’s enough difference between a pistol and a rifle in FO4 for example. Everything just feel so…samey.

There’s one huge exception to this though, and that is VATS. Because it’s directly based on character’s stats the differences between weapons and the mods they have are far more pronounced. If they could somehow translate that to real time gameplay it would be amazing.

3390

I have to agree with many of the criticisms of this game. The loot is very bland, especially for melee. Once you hit level 10 you probably have seen everything. It also annoys me that you can’t modify or effectively upgrade many unique items such as Gronack’s axe or Pickman’s blade.

The dialog options are an abomination. Your choices really have no relevance. The factions are stupid and there are no quest / conversation options to deal with it. IE: The institute doesn’t have any way to do anything about their little slavery problem and there is no way to explore their whole, “Lets kidnap people and replace them with duplicates” thing.

The plethora of radiant quests in this game is a huge negative. They are down-right dull. Fallout NV had tuns of side quests, and even the worst ones were better than any of the radiant ones. Furthermore, the number and quality of side quests in F4 is considerably lower than previous games.

I consider the perk system a failure. It was a nice idea, but mostly the perks are just junk and/or dull. There is also no reason to have level limits on perks. If you want to spend your first 5 perks on sneaking, then why not let you do that? I can’t see any line of perks being that unbalancing. Mostly because the perks are just garbage. I am betting they just had to fill in a chart the way they laid out the perks, and just couldn’t think of good ideas. You need 10 of each perk for each stat, so SOMETHING has to go there.

If they had gone with a skill system, then they could have had a much more organic perk model and just thrown in perks based on certain skill levels so you could give the player a way to enhance their favored play-style. In the current model, you need to unlock your preferred play style.

As I have said before, this isn’t a proper fallout game, not by a mile. However, as a non-fallout open world game it’s good although it could have been tremendously better. I can’t see any kind of DLC fixing this game. It has really killed my enthusiasm for the next game. I just hope a different team is working on the next Elder Scrolls game otherwise Ill need to prepare myself of disappointment.

3391

I haven’t played State of Decay, probably because I’m not that fond of zombie settings, but I’m not adverse to them, either. And while I see where you’re coming from, I’m not THAT naive. Bethesda has always had, um, serious blindspots when it comes to game design, and some of the decisions in Fallout 4 can’t be hand-waved away, for sure. But I remain somewhat skeptical that what people are asking for is the industry norm now. Perhaps I’ve simply not experienced enough of the state of the art; I’ll try and remedy that I suppose.

EDIT: Hmm, State of Decay is actually in my Steam library. Never installed it. Going to do so now :)

3392

Uh. Let’s not fall for the false thinking that you can isolate a feature out of a game and compare that against another game’s similar feature. Unless the feature is the defining aspect of the game(s).

Especially in open world RPGs shit is complicated. Everything affects everything else, and often it is the the other things that limit the shape and form of any feature (i.e. AI navigation, destructability of the environment, vehicles, quest-specific logic and so on). What is easy for State of Decay due to the simplicity of the design framework, might be very hard for Fallout.

3393

I installed State of Decay. Once I got beyond the console control feel (A and D turning instead of strafing, third-person, that sort of thing, which aren’t bad but are unfamiliar to my muscle memory) I can see a lot of what people are talking about in terms of the game’s qualities. I only made it to the church so I’m obviously just scratched the surface (and still getting used to the graphic look which I find a bit harsh). It’s clear, though, that there is a lot of integration in the world building, and the people in it are already fairly memorable and decently realized.

What this means in discussing Fallout 4, though, is sort of unclear to me still. As mixuk notes, one for one comparisons without overall context are tricky. For instance, in F4, all the crap in the ranger hut would have been stealable, and most of it searchable, whereas in SoD, only a few items are highlighted as interoperable. There’s also a sense of less freedom of 3D movement (could just be me wrestling with the controls, though) compared to the more familiar (to me) engine in F4. Now, one can argue that all that crap you can grab in F4 and other Bethesda games is just that, crap, and you might be right; there’s a virtue to limiting interoperability to significant items only. But that’s a design choice that is not binary good or bad.

Vehicles add a lot to the SoD experience, it seems, something Fallout lacks; partly though we’re dealing with vastly different time scales. Of course, F4’s timescale is nonsensical, while SoD is blessed with a much more reasonable chronology, too.

Could Bethesda have done “better” with F4? Undoubtedly, as none of these games is ever 100% what the developers wanted I’m sure. I’d love to have their take on this discussion, because I’m pretty sure the decisions they made seemed reasonable to them at the time. They may have been the wrong decisions, but I’d love to hear their arguments.

3394

I don’t think the perk system is too far gone to be saved personally. It just didn’t get nearly enough effort (which is strange because it is kind of a big part of the game). I have faith that the perks system is one thing the community can fix for bethesda.

3395

I agree with your post, but I wanted to tease out one point about VATS and weapon mods. The variety of desirable mods is much higher than may be apparent, again because the UI is awful. It does not communicate some of the trade-offs between iron sights and a scope, or a pistol grip vs a recoil-absorbing marksman’s stock, barrel lengths and clip sizes. These choices have tremendous impacts on VATS costs. Basically, anything increases effective range or weight makes it worse at VATS.

I suspect you know this already. I just wanted to emphasize two points: 1) The mod system is very flexible and 2) The UI is awful. Bethesda really needs to look at their approach to UI’s.