Warmaker01

I don't know what game you're playing, is it even FO4? What level have you gotten to, 10? While Raiders and Gunners dominate the typical human hostiles, they have gotten better armed in my game. The only weapon mod that I've installed is the R91 Assault Rifle, and I only put that in yesterday. I have nothing extra put into the equipment lists for NPCs, so in terms of gear, it's very much a near-vanilla game for me. The key thing to remember is this: There are NPC varieties within the Raiders and Gunners but they can be vastly different in equipment, especially in the upper levels: Yes, Pipe Guns are still prevalent. But I saw as I leveled up better armament mixed in for the Raiders but most definitely the Gunners. Better shotguns, Combat Rifles, Assault Rifles, even Missile Launchers. There will even be Raider groups with a few wearing Raider Power Armor. The Gunners are the ones that are more lavishly equipped between the two in upper levels. The same weapons mentioned before. A have encountered enough times in those high rise Gunner camps certain ones with Fat Man. You hear that screaming arty sound, better GTFO or you're dead. Also, something the Gunners do get that Raiders don't are energy weapons. Lasers, Plasmas. Both groups will have melee weapons for added spice but again, Gunners are better equipped. I see them with Power Fists, etc. There's also the armor variety within the Gunners and Raiders. They use Leather Armor pieces in both groups. The Raiders will use that heavily with the luckier ones with Metal and makeshift Raider Armor. A few may have Combat Armor pieces. I already mentioned the Raider Power Armor. Gunners? The scrubs may have little to no armor, just like Raiders. But past the scrubs, they typically use Combat Armor, some with the Heavy variety. Even with my Lv 100-something with very high / near-max combat skills and stats, some of those Gunner officers with that heavy armor take a while to take down in the highest difficulty, and more dangerous when there's several of them around. The Gunners in Quincy, where Preston's group originally fled from? The Gunners that beat them are still there and a few have Power Armor and are lavishly equipped. I think they are the best equipped Gunners out there. Edit: Let's not forget either the other core factions should you turn against them. I sided with the BOS so they weren't an issue for me. Synths are and the occasional Railroad remnant attacks on BOS checkpoints. But the BOS NPCs are more prevalent in the game map of the core factions. Now, I do think that the game needs to buff up the NPCs and their gear once you reach a certain level threshold. I'm thinking Lv40 onwards, maybe 50+. There's a certain point where combat oriented characters really start to dominate the game. The NPCs could use some stat boosts and better modification variety on the weapons they do have. Not necessarily equip them with Legendaries, but more, better weapon & equipment mods. You may be surprised how deadly a souped up Plasma Assault Rifle is with decent mods. The accuracy and damage, ROF is insane even in the hands of an NPC. Can the game use more NPCs? Sure, but it's not like there's a small core in the game only.

Hmm. Until a day or two ago, I took a break from FO4 in Dec 18 due to family and the holidays. Starting back up, I'll make a circuit around some settlements and notice a bunch of things broken requiring a lot of resources to repair. Generators, turrets, water purification / pumps, even stores were damaged. I've usually been very good on going to a settlement when I get the notification that one is under attack. Even when I played after the Dec 7 patch, I had fallen asleep on the computer and not noticed any of the settlement damage like this before. It's happened numerous times already despite taking great pains (i.e. resources) on outfitting my settlers very well with ample defenses.

I think that's not as much a problem with brahmin, as with Hangman's Alley having a broken navmesh. I also had problems with settlers moving from one half of it to the other half, e.g., to work the fields. Essentially, far as I can tell, that place never accounted for the possibility that you wouldn't feel constrained to build only in the part where the fortified raider settlement was. The moment people or brahmin or really anything have to go from that part to what was the free part before the gate and watchtower, it tends to brainfart. Unfortunately true. I have some settlement mods to open things up and what I did was build going up towards the rooftop levels and more of the surrounding buildings. I even made a tower that has overwatch and is in rifle range of the plaza where Diamond City Security and the Super Mutants clash all the time. I even had Guard Posts to oversee this as well as beds, etc to really bring freedom to this badly congested settlement. But the NPCs can't seem to make their way up. I'd be lucky to find 1 guard posted where I want them but everything isn't being used by the NPCs with actual activity. Things still work statistically-wise, i.e. number of beds, food farmed, etc. But the NPCs never actually go to where I want them 90% of the time. I had really high hopes with the mods to bring Hangman's Alley into combat prominence because it is the only settlement smack in the middle of a warzone. Sadly the AI can't use the advantages I've given.

Yeah, Bullet Drop never existed in FO games. In FO3 onwards, it was more of range increasing dispersal from the point of aim. As Moraelin pointed out, only Fat Man had any sort of drop to account for.

Feral Ghouls had always been more abundant than the regular ones. Even going back to FO1 & FO2, there would be 1-2 regular Ghouls in a mixed population, and MAYBE 1 area where it was heavily populated by regular Ghouls. But you encounter far more of the hostile, Feral variety. I remember being a bit too trigger happy in FO1 & FO2 and started preemptively shooting at "regular" Ghouls because of far too many encounters with the Feral variety. They didn't move like the Ferals do in FO4 which is a new thing. Ferals were found anywhere but going inside a ruined building and most especially underground locations was a sure bet in finding them. This was persistent in the FO games.

Thanks for the info. Annoying that the game makes absolutely zero mention how all that works. I am getting tired of these Brahmin materializing in some interesting places where they shouldn't be able to get in.

Both of those elements as they stand in the game are game breaking. For as blatantly strong as those 2 things are, I'm quite surprised Bethesda hasn't toned them down yet. It's hilarous firing a spray and pray weapon like a Minigun, Gatling Laser at long range with 95% accuracy and every shot hitting the head.

I do find it funny that guys are saying, "Well, Fallout is for these newer players now." Because that is EXACTLY what us old fans from FO1 & FO2 said when FO3 came out :laugh: Edit: I want to clarify. A franchise that's been around as long as Fallout will change. Almost 20 years now with FO1 releasing in 1997. The franchise irrevocably changed when it went from Interplay over to Bethesda, far more than the move from 2d Isometric Turn-Based RPG to 3d FPS Action/RPG. People in this thread talked about dialogue, dialogue options. Well, it was a whole lot better back in FO1 & FO2 and the conversation with The Master in FO1 and the possibilities were grand. Yet when Bethesda bought it out, I rolled with the punches from FO3, FONV, and now FO4. The atmosphere was never the same compared to the original two. The franchise is a whole let less risque than the original two. What FO game let you become a porn star? What FO game had male characters make sexual advances on your female character for favors? That would be Fallout 2 :cool: Yes, your female character could sleep her way up. In the move to 3d showing much more of everything onscreen we of course naturally lost the immense humor from FO1 & FO2's combat messages: With technology being the way it was for the 1990s, the games were more dependent on text. If anyone says that the earlier FO games were darker and more serious than the newer ones, they're forgetting some of the funny things you can do. Combat was also a series of bloody comedy. Not just in the text but in some of the death animations, which I felt were satisfying for its time. Again, a franchise that's been around as long as Fallout will inevitably have its changes. There were IMO, very crucial losses to Fallout's flavor when it went into 3d. Yet here I am, definitely not "one of those newer players" since I've been kicking around with this franchise since the days when a Pentium 266 was hot s#*!.

Haha, that game element is as OP as MacReady's max'ed trait :ninja: Speaking of that trait, I'm surprised Bethesda hasn't fixed that yet. It's game breaking OP.

I do not know what kind of drugs you're taking for hating settlement building so much. Modders have tried introducing this aspect into FO3 and such with limited, varying degrees of success. FO4 puts that in officially. Bethesda should have done a better job explaining the system as well as opening up more building choices. Settlement building is a huge thing in this game now, even though you yourself don't like it. Hell, the game doesn't really demand you to do it extensively except for some very rudimentary, quest related stuff. Even then, you can drop that newly acquired settlement and not do anything with it. You are not required to pursue it. However, even though YOU don't like it, the players and mod community have said otherwise. A significant portion of FO4's mods are based on Settlement Building. Again, some things could have been done better with this part of the game but it is a large addition to the game and franchise.

On a semi-related note, I do remember this mod back in Skyrim used assets from the MMORPG "TERA," and the author got permission from En Masse Entertainment to use them, which was pretty generous, IMO. So... If you really want to, I guess you can ask. The worst they can say is "No" and if you get no reply, then take that as a, "No." Best? They give the green light.

Thanks for the info OP. I think we figured out the Settlers + Ammo thing long ago. It's why souped up Laser & Plasma Weaponry are what I dish out to preferred Settlers and Provisioners. It's also way effective for the ammo cost involved :cool: We also knew that the Settlement Attack system was wonky at best but I haven't seen much in the way of specifics on that.

... has no history? no one said that! i didnt say that. this is all from the main plots of the series that you run into simply by playing the quests. this is the part that is lacking. you dont know much about the area prior to the war. you can say you do but it isnt true, you dont learn much. most locations you can find (including unmarked ones) do not provide any information towards the lore or any actual value to the game as a whole aside from finding some minor loot. what story is there has so far (for me at least) has been very boring and lacking. it is neat to see the tie ins with FO3 but the substance isnt there. it's like eating a grilled cheese sandwich, sure it can be good but it isnt that appealing by itself. the game, as i always say is good, but far from great. Lacking of knowledge about the Pre-War era? Dude, have you even gone adventuring? Nick's storyline and so many things about it have heavy ties to the Pre-War era from a Detective's POV, dealing with organized crime, a snapshot of a Pre-War setting that wasn't all about the war. The Glowing Sea is a huge collection of information and sites when the s#*! hit the fan. How are you not finding this? You complain about the lack of history, information of the game world / setting, then toss aside the idea of getting this information from your adventuring? You use FO3 and FONV as examples with information being left for you to discover, but when it happens in FO4, it doesn't count?

Obsidian did not make the "Followers of the Apocalypse" for the Fallout universe. That was with 1997's FO1, developed by Black Isle Studios. Technology had always been desired and feared in the FO universe. Fancy tech is fancy tech. But in the IP, it had also had reasons to be feared: You are also completely off with comparing the BOS in FO4 compared to the Enclave. If the BOS were the Enclave in FO4, they'd start slaughtering everyone or have a secret project that will kill everyone (and not just restricted to the Commonwealth). The BOS in FO4 is a cross in attitudes with FO1/2 and FO3 depictions.

How is there no or little story or information about the Commonwealth in FO4? You enter it abruptly after exiting Vault 111. Then you go out discovering things as you go along. Whether you follow the breadcrumbs of the main storyline or "just go some direction and run into something," you'll find out more and more of the Commonwealth and it's history. The game world offers tons of bits of history for you to discover. You find out about the Minutemen's former standing in the Commonwealth and their colossal downfall and fragmentation. You even come across Raider groups that you find out WERE Minutemen and find out why. You find out about Diamond City, it's importance in the Commonwealth, and a whole slew of things that have occurred there even before your character emerged, as well as setting in motion other things related it. You find out about the presence of other powers like the Brotherhood of Steel, Railroad, Institute get familiar with their history and what they're trying to accomplish. You find out about "The Synth Threat" and the fear, danger, disappearances, infiltration / replacement of real people by them, and settlement wipeouts from them. The game is filled with lore, history on Boston before the bombs fell. Whether the source is from someone like Nick or things you discover from adventuring. Adventuring towards the Southwestern portion of the map is RICH with history of things when the bombs dropped. Everything from airplane wrecks and transmissions, bunkers, shelters, office buildings, whatever. Your character emerges from Vault 111 into a completely strange world with a few specific goals. You have to figure out what kind of s*** you found yourself in and that only happens as you adventure, find things, interact with people, do quests. Then over time you get a clearer picture of what the overall situation is in the Commonwealth. And you know the funny thing? The same thing has persisted from FO1, FO2, FO3, FONV, and now FO4. For FO1, 2, 3, 4, you are a stranger to the game world. Whether that was due to your character spending his/her prior life entirely in a vault, or some bumf*#@-nowhere village with zero importance (FO2), your character had to discover things and slowly understand the setting. Even in FONV, you get capped in the head and know nothing. And just like every FO game, The Courier had to adventure to get a clearer picture of what's going on. Your notion that FO4's Commonwealth has no history to it is completely ludicrous.

I remember them. I however didn't get into PC gaming until EA bought them out, so I missed out on them. A lot of people missed them. You're on a roll today with pushing my annoyed buttons :laugh: I miss old school DICE. BF1942, BF2, BF2142. I put in a tremendous amount of time in those titles and had plenty of fun. The funny thing is that they had some great titles and a good reputation (to me at least) even with EA owning them. But that started changing after BF2142. Then came some changes in how DICE did things starting with BF3 and how they just never fixed that damn game. I also remember that before BF3 released, DICE says that the business practices Activision did with COD would not be done with Battlefield. Then what happens with BF3? They copy Activision's playbook. Then comes Star Wars Battlefront. DICE has more than a decade of doing FPS games with - 64 players - Combined arms combat: Wide array of vehicles, infantry - Large maps - Prior experience with a Sci-Fi FPS (BF2142) to include walker-units, motherships flying above the battlefield where players can opt to spawn in and fight from, player flown transports filled up with teammates, drop pods, etc. Produce a Star Wars Battlefront game with: - 40 players tops, even on PC - Small maps - A dearth of Star Wars vehicles, which are half the draw of the franchise - Can you even use the prone position?!? - AT-AT's on rails :mellow: The game looks, sounds stunning. But when you look at the guts of it and what DICE used to do before, I just wonder what happened. Not to mention the Frostbite Engine used since BF3 is capable of doing large maps with combined arms combat and highly quality graphics, very busy combat. SWBF is so scaled back in contrast.

Oh how I miss old school BioWare. The Baldur's Gate 1 thru KOTOR 1 timeframe? They were tops in my book in those days. But you want to know something funny about the RPGs in those late 90s timeframe? Black Isle Studios developed: Fallout 2 (1998) Planescape Torment (1999) - Classic, top notch RPG, unique setting BioWare developed Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 while Black Isle Studios was the publisher. Anyways, BIS had their hands involved either in development or publishing 2 big RPG series of the time: Fallout and Baldur's Gate. Then they sort of disappeared for me and I didn't find out until years later why. Interplay went kaput and BIS was laid off. They were working on Fallout 3 at the time so FO went into limbo until Bethesda got the IP.

You can zoom in on the map :cool:

The notion of Power Armor being weak in FO4 is interesting. Because if you keep it in good condition and have the Fusion Cores, you have little to worry about outside of a Death Claw or heavy weapons getting you (Missile Launchers, Fat Man, etc). This is especially true if you can upgrade your PA with higher marks and different mods. If anything, there have been many players complaining that the very quick availability of Power Armor trivialized a good part of the danger a player should be facing early in the game.

BioWare took what best parts of tabletop? Character generation, progression is not appreciably different from tabletop / PnP to PC/Console RPG. That leaves how adventuring was done. Because if I wanted a tight narrative, I'd simply read a book.

The scaling seems to be there but it's not the same kind of scaling that was present in Vanilla Oblivion, which I seriously disliked. I still remember mods that killed Oblivion's scaling system were big deals for it. What FO4 does is it puts in harder NPC types into the mix. I know Survival difficulty throws in more Legendary NPCs. The world is still heavily populated with the regular NPCs but FO4 starts putting in "veteran" and other powerful NPCs. Not to a point where that's all you see, but enough to make the NPC mixes interesting. Oblivion? You'll find the simplest bandits sporting the best armors in the game and that kind of broke the "image" for me. Put FO4 on Survival difficulty. Go out there without your cheats or any mods granting unforeseen advantages to the original game design. It'll be a different story and you'll be more careful. The problem however is that even with such play, there comes a certain point in your levels and equipment that you'll trivialize the world with your super strong character. That's probably why you've seen guys comment here and there that FO4's Survival difficulty is not hard enough. IMO, Vanilla FO4 shines best at the "mid game" where you finally got some good stuff, decent ammo stockpile, interesting perks, and the NPCs are still a general danger. "Early game" is good because you're still counting your caps and bullets, that pipe gun is your best weapon, and that upgraded leather chest piece is a god-send to you. Late game, it's too easy. Sure, on Survival, there will be that 1 or 2 occasions that you can still get ganked hard but you tend to mow through everything. Late game, you tend to have piled up more Fusion Cores and access to more of them makes regular use of Power Armor very easy.

thats cool. i have played a total of five minutes in FO1 and FO2 combined. i need to go back and play them but it is just hard for me to play retro games. there are some exceptions though. I will keep trying to get into it periodically. it will take sooner or later. I absolutely LOVED Fallout 1 & 2. But the one common thing both had that they were horrible at? The terrible, unwieldy, clumsy inventory system. I get that it sucked for FO1. But the fact that it persisted in FO2 was inexcusable for me. FO2 was still a fabulous game but even when I replayed them 2 years ago from a cheap compilation CD purchase? The inventory system was as clumsy of a nightmare as I exactly remembered from the 1990s. Outside that, they were fabulous games for me. Sad that Black Isle Studios didn't last too long.

Get more levels. Because that is exactly what I see with a more advanced game. Not sure if difficulty plays a role but mine is set to Survival. Seeing the leaders of a Gunner, Raider group in Power Armor or with a Power Armor frame with some pieces has become an expected thing.

I see a lot of people using previous Bethesda RPGs as examples are using Years of Mod-Induced Tinted Glasses in their comparisons. Strip away those mods that you guys downloaded, installed onto those games... What did you REALLY have underneath and compare it to what's in FO4? I'll give you already the stupid dialogue wheel of FO4. Horrible decision. But what else? Nobody is trying to speak for everyone here, It's cool that you enjoy and are happy with the game... go play it. Quit hawkin on peoples personal opinions for a rise, Most of us here commenting are in agreement in that vanilla FO4 is lackluster and desperately needs to be improved up, more so than any previous vanilla bethesda title in comparison. You have a thread on the internet and expect everyone to be in agreement with no voice of dissent?

I actually expected at least some senior Brotherhood of Steel members to be wearing T-60 in FO3 and FO4. "The Citadel" group of the Brotherhood of Steel originated from the West Coast long ago and T-60 was very much a regular thing the Brotherhood used. Hell, it was the ONLY Power Armor the Brotherhood generally used in FO1 and 2. There were some special versions but it was always T-60 at its core. It was a mistake, IMO, for Bethesda to not have at least some members of the BOS wearing T-60 in FO3 and 4.