[Collection] Overhaul/Rebalance Ideas

[alstrekalov]

This isn't a singular mod request, but more of a collection of ideas that in my opinion could help create a more in-depth survival experience, where resources are actually valuable and weapons, armor, and mods are tactical choices, rather than direct upgrades from the previous 'tier' (i.e. the silly receiver upgrades which simply buff damage at a certain point).

 

This isn't a demand from the community, but ideas to perhaps stimulate enthusiasts to create an overhauled wasteland where the linear equipment and stat progression is finally dropped, and character growth (leveling), gives more playstyle choice, rather than less, especially in terms of how to mod one's weapons and which equipment/armor to use.

 

Naturally, a lot of this will not be possible until the creation kit is released. If people are interested, I can update this once in a while, including some of the more appealing ideas others present in the thread.

 

Weapons

• [Major] Rebalance weapons, tying damage to caliber (so that the damage on any .45 gun is the same, for example), but decreasing things like accuracy, reload speed, magazine size in some cases, and increasing recoil, in order to combine with the below:
• [Major] Change all damage perks to improve weapon stats but not boost damage (i.e rifleman to give accuracy, faster reload speed, faster ADS, a lot less recoil, etc, but no more free damage). This is to be combo'd with an overhaul of health, weapons, damage, and armor for a more level playing field where it is the character's skill with a weapon that matters, not the constant increase of damage.
• [Minor] Increase pipe revolver fire rate and reload speed dramatically (personal preference perhaps, but I actually want to use this thing, but am completely discouraged whenever I pick it up because it is so inefficient with its terrible fire rate and slow reload speed.)

Clothing/Armor

• [Major] Remove all attribute buffs from clothing (especially charisma) and standardize armor/energy/radiation protection to make clothing an entirely cosmetic choice. No more swapping into charisma-buffing clothing during dialogue. With mods that enable more clothes to layer with armor pieces, this will give the player more freedom of how their survivor looks like without having to sacrifice armor effectiveness for looks. Lose attribute buffs from things like glasses and hats. Swapping perception glasses for charisma glasses mid-dialogue is just dumb.
• [Minor] In that spirit, as a tactical choice, the hazmat suit should probably weigh a ton to prevent the player from taking it with them everywhere they go and swapping into it whenever there's radiation. With a mod that decreases carry weight this will further the player's need to make decisions.
• [Minor] Make gasmasks a useful thing to carry around (increase rad protection effectively); think Stalker or Metro. Perhaps it could even be an alternative to Rad-X, especially if Rad-X was given some negative side effects.

Crafting/Mods

• [Major] Make mods give unique characteristics to weapons and armor rather than free upgrades to damage or armor/energy resistance. For firearms that would require a focus on recoil and accuracy, with perhaps only one mod that boosts damage (with maybe the side effect of losing accuracy, fire rate, or increasing recoil, depending on the weapon) whereupon one can get pretty creative with armor.

Medicine/Food

• [Minor] Extend chem and alcohol duration (especially alcohol!) I know there are perks to extend duration, and perhaps those could stay, but I think some drugs and booze need a longer duration. (Okay, so maybe I wan't my character to have a reason to be an alcoholic)
• [Major/Non-specific] Addiction mechanics and penalties need a serious re-work.
• [Minor] A single beer and a bottle of vodka should not have the same effects. This probably ties in to addiction.
• [Minor] Make stronger alcohols (vodka in particular) remove a small amount of rads. A tribute to the Stalker series. Coupled with a hardcore mod where loot is much rarer (such as chems), this will provide an alternative to Rad-Away with the below point:
• [Minor] Craftable alcohol.

Skills/Perks [A lot of these are pretty big change ideas]

• Disable gaining attribute points via level up. Yes, this is a major change, but it re-introduces the roleplay aspect the game lost. You choose your character in the start, and you stick with that. Effectively this will also create a level cap, yes.
• Alternative/roleplay starts. Wont work with the story, but starting as a hacker somewhere in Cambridge, or as a raider with melee skills and chem resistance will give another aspect of choice.
• A perception perk (high level) that highlights traps, mines. (Yeah, okay, maybe I got sick of getting my feet blown off without going into stealth. Though sprinting out of the way helps. Still, I feel this would be a interesting perk.)
• Charisma skill to always display percentages of persuasion success in dialogue (i.e. FO3, FNV), or perhaps the percentage visibility to be granted via perk. The persuasion system is currently downright awful. It is never clear how "hard" a red choice is or how "easy" a yellow choice is, and correct me if I'm wrong, but they will remain those colors regardless of one's charisma. A completely opaque system, and I don't think it's just nostalgia that's making me pine for the previous systems.
• Lockpicking and hacking need a major overhaul, including the perks, but I don't have a thorough idea of what to implement. One idea for hacking is that the perks could be replaced with the Magazine skills for example, and terminal hacking skill is directly tied to intelligence level; novice at 3, advanced at 5, expert at 7, master at 9.
• Make limb injuries require serious attention, a splint of some sort, not just a stimpack. Something craftable or purchaseable, with effectiveness dependant on the doctor/medic perks. A crippling wound should leave one limping through the wasteland, not be instantly cured with a stimpack. Also, did you know limbs regen in vanilla on their own? Wat. If anything, the older system where one had to choose a limb to treat with a stimpack was better.

...To be continued?.. Please feel free to contribute. I'm really curious as to others' thoughts on how to make Fallout 4 an immersive, hardcore roleplaying game.

[gamesaremywaifu]

- I was going to offer to do the hazmat suit weight and pipe revolver stats for you, but I don't actually see a data values clearly marked anywhere, not sure how to change it... It's not in the same incredibly obvious place that it is for items like weight for Jet and alcohol. I don't want to break something on accident so going to pass on these

 

- Craftable alcohol has been done http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1964/?

[dem0nbreather]

(I know this is an old post, but whatever. I figure a bump might help bring a little more attention to some of these requests.)

 

Man. I wish you were a modder, alstrekalov, because I want to play with pretty much all of the ideas you brought up. I imagine some of them might be available by now, and some will be reconciled with the upcoming Survival overhaul. I can't wait for that. I haven't let myself finish the game because I need Survival to live up to its name.

 

One thing that's been nagging at me is that the chem timers continue to run during dialog. As much as I enjoy the interaction with merchant characters (or as little, depending on the NPC), I feel like it's incredibly unfair for dialog to eat into my very limited buzzes. And I hate to use the term "unfair" in general, but after falling into a routine of mashing buttons to skip merchant dialog to actually be able to benefit from some of the rarer Charisma-boosters for a decent amount of time (for example, I only let myself use found grape mentats), or to keep my encumbrance capacity boost from expiring or whatever, I'm fed up. I would really like to see durations extended as you mentioned, with the timers essentially on pause whenever dialog is triggered. In exchange, I'd also like to see harsher withdrawal effects, and FAR fewer means of curing addictions.

[poorboy]

Bumping to the top since the CK is out and this has aspects that I'm looking for. (Maybe they already exist, but I can't find them.)

 

I am primarily after damage/health mods.

Like Alstrekalov said about tying damage to caliber. All damages of the same caliber should be the same. The only thing that would change that would be barrel mods, since bullets are affected by velocity, and the velocity is gained (or lost) by a longer or shorter barrel.

The other thing I also agreed with is to get rid of damage boosts for perks. Replacing them with accuracy, ADS, recoil control, etc.

 

Another thing I'd love to see is a set, base health for everything. Doesn't matter if your character is level 1 or 100, they always have the same health. Same for enemies too. The only time their health is "different" is when it's a tougher variant (Super Mutant, compared to Super Mutant Master.) and even then, I don't see there being a huge health jump. Armor (and type) would come into play more than anything. IRL, you can shoot a normal person in the head with a single pistol round and the biggest majority of the time, it will kill them. Give them a kevlar/soft metal helmet and it'll slow the bullet down, saving their life (but they bullet may still hurt.) Pistol round vs hard steel? It'll ping off and the person shot will just feel the impact. But then you jump to to a 5.56 or .308, and it'll likely go through all soft armor except hardened armor (and even at close range, 5.56 has a chance to penetrate). .50 caliber? It'll probably 1-shot most anything with a good headshot. even a deathclaw or Super Mutant Behemoth. So how would you balance that? Simple: ammo availability.

 

 

TL;DR: nothing is leveled, everything is more skill or armor stat based. Stronger weapons are rare and ammo equally rare.