5262

And carrying capacity, apparently. But yeah, even in just this little bit of play it’s pretty clear that it’s mostly just a very heavy armor set, not the genuinely special item it was in older games.

It’s funny, I’ve always played non-power-armor characters in Bethesda’s Fallout games, so I have no idea whether that’s been true the whole time. I lean towards stealth/range characters and there’s nothing stealthy about power armor.

Oh and…

This worked brilliantly, thanks for the tip!

5263

Power Armor is totally unnecessary in Fallout 4. Everything is so easy to kill, even on the hard difficulties. Sure starting out and that deathclaw flight it helps a lot, but as you level up and get better regular armor, you just do not need power armor at all unless you are going out to the glowing sea, and you only need it there because of the rads.

5264

It’s also useful against the giant crustaceans in Far Harbor.

And power armor is plenty sneaky once you’ve added the stealth boy mod.

5265

Don’t mess up my excuses not to use it. :)

5266

Hey, this is a Bethesda game; it’s at its best when it’s a ridiculous power fantasy.

To everyone knocking power armor: is your take based on survival mode or a regular playthrough? I agree it’s not necessary in a regular playthrough, but I thought it really shined in survival mode.

5267

No, it’s at its best when its modded into a much better balanced game. :)

FO3 was best with Wanderer’s Edition. FONV was only worth playing with JSawyer or, better, Project Nevada. Morrowind needed a mountain of mods (including some serious rebalances) to really shine. I never did find a combination of mods that worked for Oblivion or Skyrim (and therefore didn’t play much of either).

I’ve never been a big fan of power armor in any context, it lacks nuance and connotes “big dumb brute” to me. I don’t enjoy playing that kind of character.

5268

I’ll just say I never actually played Oblivion un-modded. (Only played it with mods! Lots of mods. Most notably probably the thing that un-fucked their level scaling)

Although I still ended the game by being 100% invisible all the time. (basically the-one-ring status)

5269

To my surprise, the initial release of Sim Setlltements 2 is already out. As someone who loved the building aspect and wished it was better integrated into the rest of the game, this looks pretty appealing for the new playthrough I was planning anyways once my Series X arrives.

5270

Happy 5th Birthday, Fallout 4!

I have fallen in love with Fallout 4, Enhanced Edition. I played for 20 hours and its already on my personal Top Ten list. Its an auto-installer mod pack that makes the game harder, more immersive, better looking and better balanced with more weapons, more companions and more settlement options.

It uses the Wabbajack auto-installer. After it was done downloading, I was up and running with a perfectly configured collection of 200 mods after less than an hour of installation.

I think the best thing is the save system. Fallout Survival mode only allows saving at beds you own. FO4EE modifies that (via the Horizon mod) with an auto-save and respawn system. That means if you die you end up back at the nearest settlement you own with all of your loot. This stops you from having to do that annoying incremental save and reload reload reload like the normal game. But you are always able to make forward progress, since nothing is lost. For me, it freed the experience so I didn’t have to worry at all about the save system, which increased the immersion and tension in the world.

Curious? Check it out.

https://www.wabbajack.org/#/modlists/info?machineURL=fallout_4_enhanced_edition

5271

I love the survival mode save system. It means you have to be conservative with exploration. That auto save and respawn system sounds like it will take away the tension of exploring the unknown.

IIRC you can save at ANY bed that isn’t owned by someone else, including neutral bed and bed you own.

5272

To me, not losing any progress from dying sounds even worse than any other system. It’s basically what happens in MMOs and it bothers me so much. If you die, you should lose progress, and have to revert back to a save, not just respawn and carry on.

5273

I understand your perspective.

Note its an optional system that is on by default but can be turned off. More info about what it does:

For me its a great system. Its still got the “need to do this - now” feeling of pure survival, where not having an incremental save right before you do something adds a lot of pressure. I find myself with a sub-optimal outcome many times, like using too many bullets or being crippled or missing with key explosives, which adds to the overall survival pressure and fun.

On the other hand, dying does NOT make me repeat content. I can get 75% of the way through some infested underground section, carefully looting as I go, and then dying to some unwinnable (at that level) fight against 3 raiders at the end of a tunnel defended by a turret. I re-spawn back at my settlement, which is not close, with the loot I managed to grab still in my pockets. With caps deducted for the healing.

Without this save system, I would have a) incrementally saved every 30 seconds until that big fight, replaying that fight multiple times until I got lucky and won or b) had to re-do everything in that whole encounter from right after my bed save including travel and the whole complex.

The result is that in a 20 hour character file I have only saved and reloaded (from a bed save) 3 times in one specific difficult section. I have “revived” 10 times, re-spawning back at my settlement. 10 revives in 20 hours still means I am playing slow and careful, which has saved me from having to re-play 10 sections of the game.

In a normal system I would have saved something like 400 times in 20 hours, and reloaded probably 60 times.

For me, saving and reloading or replaying content breaks my immersion. I would much rather “wake up” back in the settlement, then decide to explore elsewhere. I don’t want to call it rogue-like, because its not, but it forces a similar style of careful but consequential game-play.

5274

After experimenting with a variety of (modded in) save systems on Survival I ultimately just went back to “save anywhere.” It’s a sad fact that, at least for me, the game is too bug-prone, unstable, and frankly difficult to make any other option viable.

5275

Weird that we’re talking about save systems.

Everyone knows Qt3 members are card carrying save scumming hateable save babies AKA the best save system is always one keystroke away.

5276

Damn right.

5277

Until the game crashes.

True, but the world also lacks much in the way of beds or bedrolls. Hell, most raider camps don’t have any, for example. I guess they’re magical and can sleep on anything, unlike the MC.

I love the idea of only saving at a bed, but the reality is that sometimes I have shit to do and sometimes my game glitches or crashes. And survivor doesn’t let you use the console without a mod and any mod increases the chance of a crash or fail-state bug, etc, etc.

5278

All of these reasons are why the save system in Enhanced Edition (from the Horizon mod) work so well. I can get up at anytime and come back to the Exit save. Stupid bug kills me? Revive at the settlement. Or hard point save at any bed, so I have a check point history to reload if needed.

Its turned the survival save system from a flaw to a major benefit. I really like it in Enhanced Edition.

5279

On September 9, 2015, two months before the game shipped, the Bethesda team announced it was selling a Season Pass for $30 that would entitle gamers to a lifetime of DLC.

“We’ve always done a lot of DLC for our games. We love making them, and you always ask us for more,” Bethesda said in a post, according to the lawsuit. “To reward our most loyal fans, this time we’ll be offering a Season Pass that will get you all of the Fallout 4 DLC we ever do for just $30. Since we’re still hard at work on the game, we don’t know what the actual DLC will be yet, but it will start coming early next year. Based on what we did for Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, we know that it will be worth at least $40, and if we do more, you’ll get it all with the Season Pass.”

But on June 11, 2017, Bethesda announced something called Creation Club. The company characterized Creation Club as “a collection of all-new content for both Fallout 4 and [The Elder Scrolls V:] Skyrim. It features new items, abilities, and gameplay created by Bethesda Games Studios and outside development partners including the best community creators. Creation Club content is fully curated and compatible with the main game and official add-ons.”

While it sounded like “mods,” or community-created modifications for the game, it was really DLC, mostly created by Bethesda itself, said Filippo Marchino and Thomas Gray, attorneys at the class-action law firm The X-Law Group.

“Simply put, Bethesda sold a Season Pass with the understanding that it was going to give the holders of the Season Pass any and all DLC content there was going to be created for the game Fallout 4 on a go-forward basis,” Marchino said in an interview with GamesBeat. “They released a limited amount of DLC. Then they released a second wave of DLC, but decided to call it the Creation Club content and artificially removed it from the definition of DLC. Meaning that they promised people at the onset, we will give you everything we made. And then they reneged on that promise, and they did so to their benefit or the detriment of the plaintiffs. So that’s where they did something wrong. They lied. They took money from gamers, and then they made more money.”

“It clearly is downloadable content,” Marchino said. “It walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. So it is DLC. They try to slap a sticker on it and call it Creation Club content to remove it from the purview of the people that had already bought the Season Pass. But that’s artificial in nature. And it’s part of the fraud.”

Here’s where Bethesda made some amateur legal mistakes, the opposing attorneys say. Surprisingly, Fallout 4 didn’t come with an End User License Agreement, which could have spelled out the details about what gamers were entitled to, Marchino said.

“It’s surprising to me,” said David Hoppe. He’s the managing partner at Gamma Law, a game industry-focused law firm. “It’s a surprising situation for a sophisticated company.”

5280

The thin line between Season Pass DLC and Creative Club DLC is…just another revenue stream for Bethesda.

LOL not even a EULA that no one reads anyway can save Bethesda here.

5281

What a bunch of pedantic bullshit. The amount of actual DLC that was included in those 30 bucks was way more than what you’d get with most other games so this just smells like chasing some easy money on a technicality.