Why do people hate Fallout 4 so much?

[Talwyn224]

 

 

So let's go over the things I feel Bethesda has missed the mark on:

 

Technically speaking first of all this game is probably the buggiest, glitchiest game I have played all year. Before you begin, I am fully aware these things can be fixed, but I find it also pretty unacceptable for a AAA game, running on the exact same engine to have the amount of technical problems this game has on launch. Just because these problems can be fixed, doesn't mean I need to sit down and like it. When a game comes out, I would prefer it to work.

 

There's zero SLI support as of today, I run into glitches and bugs daily, and if you don't encounter them, good for you and consider yourself lucky. On PC, the mouse acceleration and framerate dives I experience in areas (More dense areas in the city) are random, and don't get me started on the framerate lock and it's reasoning behind it. The games animations are tied to the lock or it's VSync, this is inexcusable, it's amatuer, this is a video game tactic that's been done since the 80's and games nowadays do not tie their animations to framerate, they tie them to time itself. So if you unlock the framerate, turn off VSync (All things possible by gracious modders here at Nexus, and not by Bethesda simply thinking this through) you'll notice your character does everything faster and animations become more sped up as your FPS goes above 60. It's just plain technically bad developing.

 

The cons of the game itself are as such for me (I've played about 65 hours)

• No Skills. I understand they've been merged with perks but as I've played on I've gone from liking/accepting it, to thinking this is just streamlining for the sake of people who don't want to think much about their choices in character creation as much.
• There are no S.P.E.C.I.A.L based or Skill based dialogue checks, it's just Charisma now. There's just no Intelligence checks, nothing skill based like if you were an expert at Demolitions etc. there's nothing. It's tied to Charisma which is simply a dice roll even at Maximum Charisma, visualized with colors. Well I feel bloody sorry for people with color blindness.
• The dialogue "wheel" itself, is a massive step backward, and even hardcore fans of this game say this, and that's saying a lot. Because it's a massive step backward. A Lot of people claim this system branches dialogue more naturally, I think they're just not paying attention because instead of branching into different paths. 90% of the time all choices loop back into the same conclusion regardless of which one you take. Also just four options? C'mon.
• "Sarcastic" That word right there explains enough to know this system is vague as all hell. Is that a sarcastic yes, no, maybe, or f*** off? Who knows. It's a complete gamble, you might just wanna be a funny guy but you end of coming across like a complete a**hole. This is no fault of the voiced character I believe, it's more of how Bethesda designed this system AROUND the voiced character. The old games systems were fine, more deep and more importantly your choices mattered a lot more and came across as more unique. The best example is the classic Fallout games.
• A lack of a low INT dialogue, missed potential to bring this back, but I understand the reasoning.
• No Karma or Reputation system. People argue decent points on why Karma is superfluous, but the reputation system in New Vegas was much more grounded and a better system entirely. It's not there.
• No Survival Mode. The difficulty levels themselves are just lazy, just pure bullet sponge increments.
• No Power Armour training. This would've just been a nice touch personally, I think as a design standpoint of spoiling players too early with their own power armour both without training and so soon is something that doesn't jive with me well. The slow burn would've been much more satisfying as a player.
• So far to me, the morality of your choices are very black and white. You're either a goodie two shoes or a evil bastard. A well written story would've had both options but more importantly shades of moral grey. Witcher 3 and New Vegas off the top of my head do this very well.
• The lack of any real roleplay, you're always going to be a soldier vet dad or a wife who was a doctor (I think) looking for your son. You can't escape that defined background as a character, and coupled with a predetermined voice completely eliminates any unique roleplay (What if I wanna be a crotchety old man?), even Fallout 3 did this better.
• No companion wheel. I want my companions to be passive sometimes, or stay close or go away from me. All these things New Vegas did and modders for Skyrim fixed. Bethesda ignores this again.
• Mip-mapping issues. This makes Unreal Engine 3's texture loading look masterful in comparison, textures take ages to load when you walk up to something, this even occurs on your players model.
• The textures themselves feel very low. (Mods will fix it, yes, but don't make excuses for overlooked choices)
• The AI when it works, is great! But companion AI sometimes feels a bit dumb and enemy AI isn't good when it doesn't work as intended.
• You can't deny any quests. Preston Garvey will start mouthing off near you or some random dude will start talking to you even though I had no intention to talk to them and suddenly I have a quest, and my quest log is now full of stuff I wasn't ready to take on yet. Let me say no outright. Sometimes I don't want to do THAT quest now or ever.

 

 

Personally I'm waiting on Obsidian to get their hands on this and iterate upon it like New Vegas. Because that was a game made for RPG players. This is a game made to appeal to everybody. Just like Skyrim was.

 

And this is all at the cost of moving away from what it is, and should be: an RPG.

 

 

This sums up my own views on FO4 plus for me, the most annoying aspect is that the grenade/bash/block function is all mapped to 1 key which is INFURIATING in combat because I end up throwing a grenande when wanting to block or blocking/bashing when wanting to throw a grenade. Utterly stupid design but I suspect it is was made that way for the consol monkeys.

[mrspongeworthy]

 

This sums up my own views on FO4 plus for me, the most annoying aspect is that the grenade/bash/block function is all mapped to 1 key which is INFURIATING in combat because I end up throwing a grenande when wanting to block or blocking/bashing when wanting to throw a grenade. Utterly stupid design but I suspect it is was made that way for the consol monkeys.

 

 

Well, there is that, unfortunately. I think this is all part of a growing attitude on the part of developers (NOT just Bethesda) that all thier customers are idiots. Tri-Def removes access to advanced settings in their 3D software; game publishers continue to dumb-down nearly every aspect of their games; Apple seems dead-set on destroying their software by removing advanced feature after advanced feature; once-great and challenging racing SIMS become arcade-game easy (Gran Turismo, I'm pointing at YOU here). The list goes on and on. It's extremely frustrating if you are an actual, intelligent, thinking human-being. I suppose it's better for someone though. Maybe.

[BadReplicant]

I very much want to like fallout 4. There are some pretty good quests/characters but the main story is so terrible it ruins everything it touches. The wasteland is usually humanity at it's lowest, but i tell every npc about my missing son, and every npc is empathetic to the Nth degree. People are being blown up left and right, eaten by giant bugs, killed and replaced by synths <- which is never fully explained, but everyone wants to help me find my son because "that's so sad omg". Immersion broken.

 

Mods can help make the game better but you can't take out the whole main story. Every faction, most companions, every story quest involves you talking about that stupid baby. Not only is writing bad, but it shows a complete disregard for the setting(i.e. see settlement building). I have no idea why it was made this way. All these mistakes and 'new features' could have easily been avoided.

 

The fallout world itself has so many fans that could've written a story to do it justice. Whoever wrote this is apparently disinterested in the setting as well as anything from the previous games. (At least they shoehorned BoS in there.) Fallout is now 90% missing baby+base building+cyborgs . Gee thanks.

 

Fallout's a big IP and should get the same respect ES does, but it didn't.

 

On top of what other's have said:

-The pipboy UI needed an overhaul it didn't get

-The skill system got a bad overhaul it didn't need

-Special gear doesn't look special and feels randomly allocated

-Settlement building, not requested, not functional, not thought through. You can ignore it, but you will forever have an unfinished quest/quests in your menu.

(Btw, If they were that set on incorporating settlements there should have been very few of them. Diamond City is the best Boston could do in 200 years.)

-Soulless main factions, where's the trademark humor? The institute sounded like it could be interesting until I got there.

 

The main reason people are angry though is that FO3 came out SEVEN YEARS AGO. How much time do you need? If they don't care about the fans of the franchise, they should sell it and make something they do care about.

[PsyckoSama]

Lets see...

 

1) The writing is simply awful. The plot was predictable as hell, the characters were two dimensional, and the endings were just lame.

 

2) There was no roleplaying. The voiced protagonist was VERY poorly done and it's telling that they removed Karma entirely. You had the option of playing a selfless boy scout or a sarcastic boy scout who liked to get paid. There really were no moral decisions until the end, and even then it was petty much which ending do you want, the Red Ending, the Green Ending, or the Blue ending.

 

3) The world felt fake. I've been replaying the first fallout recently and I'll tell you this, it felt believable. Fallout 4 doesn't at any point. It's not a believable post-apocalyptic world. It feels like a Disney Fun ride version of the apocalypse which kills immersion entirely.

 

4) The character creation system. They dumbed it down to the point you really can't fine tune your character. The current system is crap and I look forward to seeing if someone can mod it back to something approaching quality.

 

5) The crafting system. Ironically I find the crafting system in it's massive number of options tends to limit options. The number of guns actually feels more limited than the other games while most of the designs just are nonsensical. To say nothing of the idiotic leveled loot system that has pipe pistols showing up in prewar weapons cashes

 

6) The settlement system. It could have been so good but the execution sucks. Between the limited options, limited space, horrible clipping, poor perspective, and generally unintuitive nature of it, it feels more like a mod than an in game function.

 

7) Legendaries: We don't need random boss monsters and magical weapons.

 

Frankly, I'm double pissed because they had an example of a 1st person fallout done right. Fallout New Vegas took the fallout 3 system and refined it. Had they taken lessons from that, and maybe hired a writer who could actually write worth a damn, it could have been great. Instead they pretty much went the exact opposing direction on everything and we end up with a game that feels like Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2.

Edited December 19, 2015 by PsyckoSama

[gamefever]

Its a Bethsada game.

 

I'm not disappointed at all, but I am a bit dumbfounded by people that expect something else.

[BadReplicant]

Its a Bethsada game.

 

I'm not disappointed at all, but I am a bit dumbfounded by people that expect something else.

Stop trolling. If you can't see the problems with Fo4, I'm surprised you can even work a keyboard. If it was like any other Bethesda game, I would be happy with it.

[gamefever]

@ Badreplicant

 

Now who's trolling?

 

You are.

[BadReplicant]

@ Badreplicant

 

Now who's trolling?

 

You are.

Sorry I was insulting. You post was insulting to everyone here, though. If you want to add to the discussion, read and reply to the points being made, instead of insulting everyone's intelligence and ignoring the reasons they've posted.

[charwo]

No Gamefever has a point. These are ALL the complaints I read about and groused about myself in Fallout 3. I HATE Fallout 3, and I hate Elder Scrolls because ultimately I hate the way Bethesda builds it's games. All of this, from the increasing casualness to lackluster writing, unemotive characters, f*#@ing dungeon crawls instead of good storytelling, not giving a damn about realism, this is all Bethesda again and again. The only reason anyone who played Fallout 3 has to be surprised about what Fallout 4 was, were those who expected Bethesda to pay close attention to New Vegas. I was one of them, and they didn't.

[scheisseimhirn]

Why do people hate Skyrim so much? We could have had the same discussion 4 years ago. After Skyrim was released, the first few month were full of hate for the game and Bethesda from the fans of Oblivion and Morrowind. "Where are the classes?!", "where are the attributes?!", "this game is so dumbed-down!!", "this game is so stream-lined!"... Haha, I remember that there were threads about how Skyrim is dead in a few months, if the mod tools aren't released immediately, because it was so bad.

The hate on the official Beth forums for Skyrim was much more than it is now for Fallout 4.

There are much more hate comments about Fallout 4 on YouTube though. Most probably, because YouTube is bigger now than it were in 2011.

 

Two things are different now, though, between the hate for Skyrim in the day and the hate for Fallout 4 now. There was a 4chan troll raid on Metacritic for Fallout 4 (with hundreds of 0 or 1 reviews in the first days). I don't even know if Metacritic was that of a thing back in November 2011. I don't remember Skyrim getting so many negative reviews despite the massive amount of hate.

 

The other thing different is that more game magazines are critical of the stream-lining of Fallout 4 (no skills, no karma, etc). There was not so much game magazines critic of Skyrim.

 

I DO hope Bethesda takes the "official" critic to heart and they don't stream-line the next ES so much. Maybe even bring back classes, or whatnot.

Edited December 20, 2015 by scheisseimhirn