This may be an odd request -- it's definitely a big one. At the moment, I'm mostly just wondering if it's possible. Ever since FO4 released and crushed all of my dreams, I've wondered why I still put so much time into it. I'll spare you my long journey of studying game design and applying what I learned to my experience with FO4, but I've concluded that FO4 is indeed a good game (go figure). My issues with the game fall on the overall direction Bethesda took when designing it. The mod: Scrap all current quests, and prepare to repurpose every aspect of the game. I was thinking about a complete overhaul, starting the player off in Vault 81 a century before Bethesda's game takes place. This way the junktown vibe all of the settlements give off -- both player created and otherwise -- would make more sense, and the world map could still be used. The main alteration to the map would be to make it far more radioactive -- think the glowing sea, but covering most of the map. The goal of this would be to keep the player away from dangerous areas in the early game, and to provide a real sense of harshness to the environment -- I want to shy away from the level-based enemy and loot scaling in favor of actually designing a rewarding map. Raiders, mutants, etc will still be around, but the player's first challenge will be survival -- I go back and forth on whether or not food, water, and sleep should be factored into this similar to the supernova difficulty in Outer Worlds, or if the radiation is enough. Early game missions will revolve around the player being sent out of the vault to scavenge resources, giving them a chance to get used to listening to their Geiger counter to figure out where is safe and where you'll get cooked from the inside. If Food, etc., are part of survival, the first few missions will be to repair Vault 81's source of food and water so the player can quickly develop a home base with inf. supplies. Power armor would be found much later on in the game, and would be found piece by piece rather than just being given a full suit of armor at the start of the damn game. Fusion cores would also be rebalanced to be much rarer, but maybe last longer -- and might work well with the fusion core recharger mod. This would give actual value to rad suits, which would still be rare, but easier to find than the in-universe equivalent of a walking tank, and power armor could feel like something special. The main mission will be to establish outposts between radioactive areas and develop safe trade lines for caravans to t, ravel between settlements. this will tie in with player-made settlements, as caravans can only travel so far before needing a safe place to rest. More settlement buildings will require the player to find blueprints as well, since this wouldn't be something a vault dweller would know off hand. The settlements can of course be upgraded to have vendors and permanent citizens just like in the vanilla game, I mostly just want to make it a more essential part of the game itself. I'll stop there to keep this post from turning into a novel, but I have so much more in mind. Anyway, what do the more experienced modders out there think, is this (massive workload aside) possible? Like the title of this post says, the goal would be to pretty much create an entirely different game using vanilla FO4 as an engine. I myself can design quests and game mechanics, do sound design and music (though that probably won't be necessary), voice act, and write, but I only have a passing familiarity with the modding utilities. Even if no one is willing/able to help me put this together, I'm still very curious what people think of the game idea.
