crawe1x

Fa I disagree. The game has its problems for sure, but there are plenty of times where it feels pretty damn epic to me. Like when you first leave Vault 111 and the main theme starts to play as you prepare to head back to the surface to avenge your spouse. Another one is just after killing Kellogg (which itself is a great but too brief showdown), and you come out of Fort Hagen only to spot the Prydwen for the first time; that's when you realize you're going to have to deal with these super powerful BoS turds as well as the Institute. There are a bunch more. So yes, for me at least, the game is definitely capable of provoking reaction/emotion. You made my dog laugh. Fair enough. Each to his own :smile:

I disagree. The game has its problems for sure, but there are plenty of times where it feels pretty damn epic to me. Like when you first leave Vault 111 and the main theme starts to play as you prepare to head back to the surface to avenge your spouse. Another one is just after killing Kellogg (which itself is a great but too brief showdown), and you come out of Fort Hagen only to spot the Prydwen for the first time; that's when you realize you're going to have to deal with these super powerful BoS turds as well as the Institute. There are a bunch more. So yes, for me at least, the game is definitely capable of provoking reaction/emotion.

Exactly. I'm not sure a word like "cheating" is even relevant here. Beth balanced the game in a certain way. You've now bought the game, it's your property, so why not mod it to better suit your tastes, whether that means downloading mods or using the console? To be fair, that's the great thing about Beth games. I find it virtually impossible to go from one of their games to something like, say, Assassin's Creed, where the developers force you to play in a very specific way.

Actual facts are always appreciated! And your conclusions here sound pretty solid. :thumbsup:

Animation tools... I wonder, does this mean we'll possibly be seeing pump-action shotguns at some point? :whistling:

Relax, no one's complaining. It's called "banter" ;-) It's a great game and I know how it works just fine. Also, I never said my playthroughs got broken. However, if i come across a great new mod that changes a major aspect of the game, for the sake of consistency, I prefer to start over. No big deal.

Yep, I always end up designing the same Steve McQueen wannabe character over and over. It reminds me of that quote about insanity, where you keep doing the same thing repeatedly. In a way, I'm glad Nuka World is the last DLC. Once it's out, I'm going to select all my mods and then not look at the Nexus for a couple of months while I finally get to do my playthrough all the way to the end (yeah right).

I was thinking along these lines. I'm no expert on Fallout lore, but at one we learn that the Minutemen made their name after beating off a huge super mutant attack on Diamond City. Now that is the sort of battle I would like to fight late game. A kind of last hurrah for the wasteland bad guys - maybe several of them even, each aimed at a key settlement. Your alien idea could also work. Honestly, I don't know much about how the aliens figure in Fallout lore. It seems strange that there's this one alien and his ship, but nothing more comes of it.

Tell me about it ;-) I spend a few weeks on a playthrough, then some new DLC/mod comes along and I end up starting over. I've forgotten how many times I've restarted this damn game. I agree with you that sandboxing for the sake of sandboxing gets kind of dull. That's why I'd like some sort of tangible, achievable goal when it comes to settlement building... And like you said in your first post, there would still be pockets of bad guys in between the zones.

I think for me, the biggest problem with the settlement system is that there is no real meaning behind it. There is no strategic goal. Put it this way... You can spend hundreds of hours building settlements. Let's say you have up to thirty settlements strung right across the Commonwealth. Thanks to mods, some of those settlements are close to Diamond City in terms of size. Regarding manpower, they have 50+ settlers, armies of killer robots, guard dogs, etc. They have high walls, they have hundreds of gun turrets. They are connected by supply lines that run across the wasteland, which are manned by massively overpowered robot provisioners (or human provisioners equipped with the best armor and weapons), who obliterate pretty much anything that gets in the way... And yet despite all that, the Commonwealth doesn't really change. You still get two-bit raider gangs spawning left right and centre. It's nonsensical that they would even try to attack your settlements, but they do. I've reached levels of advancement where my gun turrets have obliterated squads of elite super mutants in literally three seconds flat. They're dead before I even have a chance to draw my weapon and join in the fun! What I would have liked to see is a system where each settlement is connected to a small geographic zone within the map. That zone represents your settlement's area of influence. In other words, once your settlement reaches a certain level of advancement, its influence is so great that spawned attacks just don't happen any more. That zone is now 'safe'. Over time, the entire Commonwealth would be made safe - at which point, you would have achieved a strategic goal (i.e. bringing law and order to the Commonwealth). You could then end the play-through - or carry on with radiant quests. Basically, the current settlement system takes inspiration from The Sims (so people keep telling me - I've never played those games). But I think it should also take inspiration from strategy games such as the Total War series.

It has its flaws for sure, as does everything, but in my opinion, overall it's an excellent game. Even better when played with the right mods.

I think this is a very sensible approach. I was thinking of starting a new play-through a few days back, but decided to wait until the final two DLCs are out (plus another week or two for modders to catch up). I think at that point we can play/mod our games with greater confidence that most things will continue to work as intended.

Dark0ne, an excellent and well-reasoned article. I for one really appreciate the great work and dedication that you and your team do here at Nexus Mods. Bethesda have made some excellent games, but when it comes to managing a modding community, they could learn so much from you guys.

So I'm assuming Expired's Unlimited Companion Framework still works with the FH questline? I've got my gang of five and would hate to break it up.

It doesn't matter. I typically do Automatron early so as to get access to the robots. In my current playtrhough, I will probably finish the main quest before I do Far Harbor, but that's just personal preference.

Yep, same here, it appeared at the bottom of my esm order, behind things like Spring Cleaning, Robot Home Defence and Armor Keywords. Also, rather than DLCFarHarbor, it has a strange title - DLCCoast - which can easily be glanced over.

Some very interesting points being made in this thread. Definitely there are a lot of missed opportunities regarding plot and characters. I'm a professional screenwriter, and if the games industry is anything like the movie industry, the writers of FO4 would have been under great pressure to dumb things down and streamline the story to the point where it makes absolutely no sense at times. As a writer, you go along with this approach because you have bills to pay and a family to support. Refuse and your career will be very short-lived indeed. It's just the way things are. From my experience, very few execs in the creative industries have any real understanding of artistry. They treat movies (and I imagine computer games) no different to a new range of cars or a brand of breakfast cereal. It's just another product. They're also fixated on the teenage market. That's fine, except they seem to think all teenagers are idiots with the attention span of a gnat. I've got a teenage son, and sure, he loves console games, particularly CoD, and Marvel movies... but he also appreciates the deeper things in life. I just wish the execs would stop consistently playing to the absolute lowest denominator. Teens can be pretty damn smart if given the opportunity. So yes, some of the writing in FO4 isn't great. Now maybe the writers were hacks who couldn't care less. Or maybe they DID care but just didn't have a choice in the matter. The most depressing thing is that Bethesda strikes me as one of the BETTER companies out there. They do at least seem to care about the games they develop, and for all its flaws, FO4 is still deeper and more intelligent than a lot of other games (and movies) out there.

Honestly I was hoping for a pump-action shotgun ;_; Yep, the lever action rifle looks cool, but I can't believe there are no pump shotguns in the FO4 universe. Very odd.

Yesh, it just sounds like a real pain in the backside. I'm not even tempted to try it right now. In my opinion, mods like Arbitration make the game challenging in a far more logical and less annoying manner.

Same here. Generally, it seems like a good update and my game feels a lot more stable. That said, I know a lot of people are having problems... Could be mod conflicts I guess.

Looks pretty good to me. Sure, you can never trust the marketing guys, but at the very least - like Automatron - this will be a welcome addition to the base game. If it is to FO4 what Dawnguard was to Skyrim, I'll be happy.

There are some interesting aspects to the mode (diseases, hunger, etc), but some really dumb things as well. The whole sleeping thing, for instance, is a nice idea but very poorly implemented. The inability to save is also stupid - and I don't particularly want to add a mod to my game that is basically just there so that I can save my progress in a convenient manner. Not sure what Beth was smoking when they came up with that idea. Anyway, I'm finding that the Very Hard setting with mods such as Arbitration, Better Explosives, Super Mutant Overhaul, Darker Nights, True Storms, etc. plus my own personal tweaks, makes for a more stimulating and immersive experience.

Agree on every point.

OP, you've got my sympathy. Here's my solution... In my current play-through, I exited the vault and set my level to 111. So I instantly had 110 perk points to spend... Plus I maxed out my SPECIALS just beforehand (so equivalent to level 150+). My rationale was that I was playing an ex-war hero, so I focused particularly on giving him the combat-related perks. And you know what? It's been the most exciting, satisfying and challenging play-through I've ever had (especially when you opt not to use the more over-the-top weaponry and armor). What I discovered was that, sure, I had the stats of Jack Bauer crossed with Jason Bourne. Unfortunately, I was going up against Mega Legendary Mythical Ancient Alpha Chameleon Deathclaws and the like the moment I entered the wastelands. Take a mission like Reunions, where you have to hunt down Kellogg in Fort Hagen. Playing it as a low-level character was never a challenge for me. But this time around, I found myself up against some very powerful and well equipped synths, many of whom were legendary. It was a real edge of your seat experience: basically, whoever fired second was dead. Then if you add in danger-enhancing mods like Arbitration, Better Explosives and the Super Mutant Overhaul, things can get very nasty very quick. Haven't died yet, but I've lost count of my close shaves (hearing my character's heart beating as his health dips dangerously low). The one advantage is that because you've got plenty of health, you've got a few extra vital seconds to react to the situation and turn it around (even if that means running away). Another thing, when you take this approach, it has other unforeseen consequences. Because you're already high level, further leveling up is very very slow. And the reality is that 150 odd perk points don't go nearly as far as you might think. It means that you're an expert with most weapons, sure, but suddenly choosing between another point in Robotics Expert or Cap Collector or Local Leader becomes a big deal - because you know you won't have another perk point to spend for a very long time in-game. So in a strange way, going up a level feels like a really big deal. So yeah, I know a lot of people would call it cheating, but it certainly doesn't feel like it.

Interesting. I've never heard any of the NPCs making nude comments. I'll have to check it out.