Fixing the game vs tweaking the game

[maybemeandyou]

Hi guys, im a little confused, not confused that i dont know the answer but im at a loss. I cant help but think to myself that mods are going to end up "fixing" the game rather than tweaking and refining it. I mean, bethesda (IN MY OPINION) did a s#*! job of story writing and features. everything seemed so unrefned and coarse. IT WAS A GOOD GAME NO DOUBT, which is why im here but does anyone else feel like this game needs actual fixing at its core rather than just minor adjustments and goofy addons like previous titles? I dont recall anyone ever complaining about fo3 or nv story lines, each one was magnificent and well written. just seems like this game went too streamline and is a bit lackluster. maybe its just because i came from fo2, 3 and nv so im not thinking the same way you guys do. any thoughts on this?

[madmongo]

I came from FO3 and FNV. I actually did not like FNV at first. Once I got to the Strip, I hated the game. That wasn't Fallout, in my opinion. That was gangsters and casinos, and Fallout is survival in a harsh wasteland. I actually stopped playing FNV at that point. A long time later, I heavily modded FNV, and took the strategy of spending as little time in the Strip as possible, and ended up really enjoying the game. So yeah, i wasn't all that wild about FNV's story line.

 

Another problem with FNV (for me at least) was that they left the Courier's background a complete blank. It's nice in the sense that this enabled the player to put whatever background in there that their imagination could dream up, but the problem with it was that anything you dreamed up was only in your head and had no connection at all to anything in-game. You want to be a vault dweller that became a courier? Well, that's nice, but you're not from any of the vaults in the game.

 

I liked FO3's story a lot better, and I like the basic setup of FO4, but there are a lot of things I don't like about it too. FO4 assumes that you are married, that you are deeply in love with your spouse, and that you have a child. You really don't have any other options. I wouldn't have minded the forced setup so much if I had been given some options to complain about it. From a role playing point of view, you almost have to do the main quest, because nothing else makes sense for your character. If you don't, it's kinda like OMG MY SON IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO ME AND HE'S MISSING but oh wait I'll just ignore all of that and I'll do a bunch of meaningless stuff with complete strangers instead of looking for him. My spouse was killed, my son is missing, and the game thinks there's some logical reason that I should spend all of my time building basketball courts and water pumps for people I just met and have no connection to at all. On the other hand, if I had been given the option to be a complete a-hole to my spouse and make it clear that we weren't in love, then it makes a lot more sense for me to just say screw the kid and go off and do other things.

 

But the real big problem for me is that they turned Fallout from an RPG into a shooter. I'm an RPG player. I'm not so much interested in shooters. What works well for a shooter is complete garbage for an RPG, and what works well for an RPG is complete garbage for a shooter. I dunno, maybe they thought they could have the best of both worlds and appeal to a larger audience, but in doing so, as far as I'm concerned, they've completely ruined the RPG.

 

The main quest completely holds your hand all the way through. You escape from the vault, and your first quest is to go home. There, your robot tells you to go to where the Minutemen are. Mama Jet-Head tells you to go to Diamond City, where you meet Piper, who tells you to see the detective, etc. Every step along the way you aren't even given the chance to try to figure things out on your own. It's almost impossible to immerse yourself in the role playing aspects of the game if you aren't even allowed to make any decisions or figure anything out on your own.

 

You can go off of the main quest and go out exploring on your own if you want, but that doesn't make any sense from a role playing point of view. My son is missing, so I think I'll go explore this old ruin? Yeah, uh, no. That doesn't work.

 

The streamlined shooter-style dialog also ruins the immersion. You aren't even sure what you are going to say half the time.

 

A fairly popular mod for FO3 was FWE, and it had survival options that made the game much more interesting, and challenging. FNV included these (which it called hardcore mode instead of survival mode), which I thought was great. The shooter style gamers complained about it though, and for FO4, they took it out, which I thought was a huge step backwards. FO4 has survival mode, but it's a hardcore combat mode and has nothing to do with survival. From an RPG point of view, survival mode not only makes things more interesting, it also gives you a reason not to follow the main quest right away. Sure, you want to find your son, but if you just go zipping out across the wasteland, you'll starve to death or die of dehydration. You need to make allies, build up your supplies, etc. so that you can go out after your son. This gives you some actual motivation for helping the Minutemen or whatever faction you chose.

 

Now don't get me wrong. There are people who like shooter style games who think that everything I just complained about makes the game better. I'm an RPG player though, and Fallout comes from an RPG history, not a shooter history. FO3 and FNV were more RPG than shooter, and FO1 and FO2 were definitely all RPG.

 

I haven't even finished the game because of the brain dead main quest and the totally immersion breaking combat stupidity. All of the bullet sponges, jump scares, and legendary stuff just makes me shake my head and turn the game off.

 

To be fair, I didn't finish FNV either at first. But like you said, the mods for FNV were more tweaks and adjustments, and that fixed the game for me. For me, FO4 needs its combat system to be completely overhauled. If you unload the entire clip from a submachine gun into a dog's head at point blank range, the dog should be dead. Similarly, if a super mutant fires a rocket at you, you should get blown to bits. Combat between a bullet sponge player and bullet sponge enemies makes for good high-ammo count battles from a shooter point of view, but from an RPG point of view they are unrealistic garbage.

 

In these respects, I feel like you do, that this game is broken all the way down to the core.

 

I'm waiting to see what mods can do to fix all of this.

 

One of my fears is that a lot of shooter players will prefer the new Fallout over the old RPG Fallout, and if FO4 as a shooter is successful financially, that will mean the end of the Fallout RPG.

 

Here's what I want in Fallout.

 

1. A realistic combat mode. If you shoot someone in the head 3 times, that should be 2 more shots than you need to kill them. Likewise, if someone shoots you in the head, same deal.

2. A realistic survival mode. Food, water, sleep. just like FNV.

3. Quests that you can immerse yourself into. A big part of that is quests that don't hold your hand every step of the way.

 

If FO5 doesn't have these, I won't be buying it. I don't care if they are all options that are turned off by default, and I don't care if the default game plays exactly like FO4's shooter style. But I want these options.

 

Another big problem with FO4 is the voiced player. That makes it impossible to add new quests and have them fit in with the rest of the game, and if they don't function like the rest of the game, that's a big immersion breaker right there. It's also a huge problem if the player voice doesn't match the character that you create. Since you don't have any options with the player voice, that limits the characters that you can create and have their voices match their faces.

 

Once I get FO4's combat overhauled and a survival mod installed, I'll finish the game and I'll do a lot more exploring. After that though, I'm probably going to go back to FNV and continue modding and playing it, since it's still an RPG.

[maybemeandyou]

interesting perspective. New vegas took a while to grow on me as well, however I saw that there was also a lot of power and riches in fallout 2 which made sense to have in new vegas. there are so many things to do and the main story itself is so well tied to your own actions almost everything you do will change the game. I truly feel that the freedom of choice and consequence is completely gone from fo4. just breaks immersion. so much could have been done...shame.

[oldspice2625]

Honestly, if you played FO1 and FO2, it makes much more sense to have FNV's storyline. Bethesda just wrecked your head by blowing everything up and making everything into a tribal shanty with no hope of every being anything but a little shack....

 

There were many thriving communities that were expanding, so FNV's story continued with that, and logically it would make sense for both Caesar's Legion to confront the NCR at some point, the strip was a new addition, but it made sense, given that there were other communities that were much larger and more sustainable than the strip, so it didn't seem so out of place in the WEST COAST FO universe.

 

FO3 was okay, but FNV follows the lore by far in a more superior fashion, though it's no perfect game by any means.

 

FO4's background was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy to predetermined to this kind of game. FO3 was alright, too much, but not nearly as terrible and unforgivable as FO4...

 

I'm dead serious in saying that FO4 was just about as bad as Mass Effect 3's ending. Rushed, incoherent, none/limited cohesiveness in plot, and the endings themselves are lack luster and give little satisfaction.

[Boombro]

Mods has always fixed games as long they existed, and people did that for the past titles:

 

They fixed the AI.

They fixed the meshes collision.

They fixed the bugs.

The shitty karma.

The shitty repair system.

The followers sandbox.

The neck seams.

The leveled lists.

The damage.

And everything you can think of that they find faulty in anyway possible.

 

Also you say core, but the only thing you talk about the core is the writing? How is that the core of the game? I mean what you say, but we are talking modding.

 

And FO3 writing was bad. It was very black and white for one, the main quest was super, bright white and no evil person would do it. At least fo4 writing is grayer in many areas and no faction is 100% hero and super good, expect the useless MM and they are a great burden. But I agree it still s***.

 

 

Don't worry, changing the writing is easy. At least the PC with a no voice MOD, and you can also change the quests the bit. The only problems is having no voice files that are fit for NPCs.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Boombro

[maybemeandyou]

not really the writing that causes it to be faulty at the core but going all the way to base level, the engine itself is dated. top this with the illusion of choice, not even in writing but actions just dont seem to make or break anything here. also it seems to revolve around diamond city, i really wish there were more places to visit and trade (not just settlements). They focused on one thing and stopped focusing on everything else. Have you seen the southern part of the map? is awful. its just an empty swamp with the occasional building. every machine is static ingame, there are no puzzles or things to figure out. the game has you on a leash all the way through the story. nv was bad in those terms but still gave us the option of choice.

 

then weapons are incredibly stupid. i find it rather bland that you can magically turn a .38 into a .50. no weapon degrading? i was certain this was supposed to be somewhat realistic. they also didnt add different ammo types like in nv. they expect us to utilize the weapons features if its a legendary or whatnot. this game in all its glory needs fixing over tweaking.

 

also those mentioned above are not game breakers, just tweaks to the games code to refine it for a better experience.

[JimboUK]

I came from FO3 and FNV. I actually did not like FNV at first. Once I got to the Strip, I hated the game. That wasn't Fallout, in my opinion. That was gangsters and casinos, and Fallout is survival in a harsh wasteland. I actually stopped playing FNV at that point. A long time later, I heavily modded FNV, and took the strategy of spending as little time in the Strip as possible, and ended up really enjoying the game. So yeah, i wasn't all that wild about FNV's story line.

 

Another problem with FNV (for me at least) was that they left the Courier's background a complete blank. It's nice in the sense that this enabled the player to put whatever background in there that their imagination could dream up, but the problem with it was that anything you dreamed up was only in your head and had no connection at all to anything in-game. You want to be a vault dweller that became a courier? Well, that's nice, but you're not from any of the vaults in the game.

 

I liked FO3's story a lot better, and I like the basic setup of FO4, but there are a lot of things I don't like about it too. FO4 assumes that you are married, that you are deeply in love with your spouse, and that you have a child. You really don't have any other options. I wouldn't have minded the forced setup so much if I had been given some options to complain about it. From a role playing point of view, you almost have to do the main quest, because nothing else makes sense for your character. If you don't, it's kinda like OMG MY SON IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO ME AND HE'S MISSING but oh wait I'll just ignore all of that and I'll do a bunch of meaningless stuff with complete strangers instead of looking for him. My spouse was killed, my son is missing, and the game thinks there's some logical reason that I should spend all of my time building basketball courts and water pumps for people I just met and have no connection to at all. On the other hand, if I had been given the option to be a complete a-hole to my spouse and make it clear that we weren't in love, then it makes a lot more sense for me to just say screw the kid and go off and do other things.

 

But the real big problem for me is that they turned Fallout from an RPG into a shooter. I'm an RPG player. I'm not so much interested in shooters. What works well for a shooter is complete garbage for an RPG, and what works well for an RPG is complete garbage for a shooter. I dunno, maybe they thought they could have the best of both worlds and appeal to a larger audience, but in doing so, as far as I'm concerned, they've completely ruined the RPG.

 

The main quest completely holds your hand all the way through. You escape from the vault, and your first quest is to go home. There, your robot tells you to go to where the Minutemen are. Mama Jet-Head tells you to go to Diamond City, where you meet Piper, who tells you to see the detective, etc. Every step along the way you aren't even given the chance to try to figure things out on your own. It's almost impossible to immerse yourself in the role playing aspects of the game if you aren't even allowed to make any decisions or figure anything out on your own.

 

You can go off of the main quest and go out exploring on your own if you want, but that doesn't make any sense from a role playing point of view. My son is missing, so I think I'll go explore this old ruin? Yeah, uh, no. That doesn't work.

 

The streamlined shooter-style dialog also ruins the immersion. You aren't even sure what you are going to say half the time.

 

A fairly popular mod for FO3 was FWE, and it had survival options that made the game much more interesting, and challenging. FNV included these (which it called hardcore mode instead of survival mode), which I thought was great. The shooter style gamers complained about it though, and for FO4, they took it out, which I thought was a huge step backwards. FO4 has survival mode, but it's a hardcore combat mode and has nothing to do with survival. From an RPG point of view, survival mode not only makes things more interesting, it also gives you a reason not to follow the main quest right away. Sure, you want to find your son, but if you just go zipping out across the wasteland, you'll starve to death or die of dehydration. You need to make allies, build up your supplies, etc. so that you can go out after your son. This gives you some actual motivation for helping the Minutemen or whatever faction you chose.

 

Now don't get me wrong. There are people who like shooter style games who think that everything I just complained about makes the game better. I'm an RPG player though, and Fallout comes from an RPG history, not a shooter history. FO3 and FNV were more RPG than shooter, and FO1 and FO2 were definitely all RPG.

 

I haven't even finished the game because of the brain dead main quest and the totally immersion breaking combat stupidity. All of the bullet sponges, jump scares, and legendary stuff just makes me shake my head and turn the game off.

 

To be fair, I didn't finish FNV either at first. But like you said, the mods for FNV were more tweaks and adjustments, and that fixed the game for me. For me, FO4 needs its combat system to be completely overhauled. If you unload the entire clip from a submachine gun into a dog's head at point blank range, the dog should be dead. Similarly, if a super mutant fires a rocket at you, you should get blown to bits. Combat between a bullet sponge player and bullet sponge enemies makes for good high-ammo count battles from a shooter point of view, but from an RPG point of view they are unrealistic garbage.

 

In these respects, I feel like you do, that this game is broken all the way down to the core.

 

I'm waiting to see what mods can do to fix all of this.

 

One of my fears is that a lot of shooter players will prefer the new Fallout over the old RPG Fallout, and if FO4 as a shooter is successful financially, that will mean the end of the Fallout RPG.

 

Here's what I want in Fallout.

 

1. A realistic combat mode. If you shoot someone in the head 3 times, that should be 2 more shots than you need to kill them. Likewise, if someone shoots you in the head, same deal.

2. A realistic survival mode. Food, water, sleep. just like FNV.

3. Quests that you can immerse yourself into. A big part of that is quests that don't hold your hand every step of the way.

 

If FO5 doesn't have these, I won't be buying it. I don't care if they are all options that are turned off by default, and I don't care if the default game plays exactly like FO4's shooter style. But I want these options.

 

Another big problem with FO4 is the voiced player. That makes it impossible to add new quests and have them fit in with the rest of the game, and if they don't function like the rest of the game, that's a big immersion breaker right there. It's also a huge problem if the player voice doesn't match the character that you create. Since you don't have any options with the player voice, that limits the characters that you can create and have their voices match their faces.

 

Once I get FO4's combat overhauled and a survival mod installed, I'll finish the game and I'll do a lot more exploring. After that though, I'm probably going to go back to FNV and continue modding and playing it, since it's still an RPG.

 

Fallout wasn't a wasteland survival game it was an RPG, 1,2 and NV are what Fallout should be, FO3 was an aberration and the less said about FO4 the better. The couriers background is left blank because you're supposed to be able to play the character you want to play, not one forced on you, the Elder Scrolls leaves the characters background blank and I don't see people complaining about that.

[madmongo]

I'm not saying that Fallout was a survival game. What I'm saying is that Fallout is an RPG, and things that are more realistic, like survival, realistic combat, etc. all help the role play immersion. That makes it a better RPG. Shifting to a combat system that is much less realistic and removing the survival aspects from the game make it much less realistic. The survival aspects alone give you a good reason as a role player to join a faction and do a lot of side quests instead of following the main quest. Take away the survival stuff, and joining a faction instead of searching for your son makes no sense whatsoever.

 

I disagree with you about FO3. I think it fits just fine with the lore and the story plays well. I liked it.

 

Also, everything I said is just my opinion. I know I'm not the only one who dislikes the shift from an RPG to a shooter for FO4, but I never claimed to represent all RPG players. Those are just my opinions. You are free to disagree with them if you want.

Edited January 24, 2016 by madmongo

[Boombro]

Realism was never a part RPGs though, that is for shooters and early access games.

 

 

faction instead of searching for your son makes no sense whatsoever.

It does when I don't want the son that not be even mine.

Not every parent loves babies.

 

 

 

I disagree with you about FO3. I think it fits just fine with the lore and the story plays well. I liked it.

I love FO3, but the problem is that it lore and theme is vastly different from FNV lore.

[madmongo]

Realism was never a part RPGs though, that is for shooters and early access games.

 

I have to disagree with that one.

 

If realism isn't a part of RPGs, why was FWE so popular for FO3? Why did Bethesda include survival needs in FNV? Why is Frostfall such a popular mod for Skyrim? Why did someone make a mod for Skyrim so that coins have weight?

 

Maybe you don't care, but a lot of RPG players do care about realism. Well, realism of a sorts, anyway. Let's face it, when a dragon comes out of the sky to breathe fire on you, that's not exactly realistic in the real world. But you want that dragon's fire to behave like real fire. And for Fallout, you don't want to get rid of the cheesy 1950's sci-fi theme just because parts of it are kinda unrealistic (like ghouls, radiation doesn't do that). So it's a certain type of realism.

 

 

It does when I don't want the son that not be even mine.

Not every parent loves babies.

 

The game doesn't give you that option. Try your various conversation options at the start of the game. You love your spouse and you care deeply about your baby. There are no other conversation options. Also, go to the Institute and watch your own reaction when you find your son.

 

I'm also curious what you think is so different about the lore in FO3. Vault-tec makes vaults that experiment on people in both games (that's kinda the point of Fallout). The DC branch of the Brotherhood of Steel aren't such a-holes as the guys in the western U.S., but they are 2000 miles away from each other. I wouldn't expect them to be completely uniform across the entire country. Synths are an east coast thing, so you have synths in FO3 and FO4, but not FNV.The lore doesn't seem that different to me.