Let's talk about encumbrance

[theoneandonlyboiler]

 

 

Oh sorry, it just PC gamers are like.

Easy = causal = for console players. Have to admit that was really shitty from me, sorry man.

 

Well, although I personally don’t like consoles for various reasons I certainly would never judge anyone based on the system they choose to play their games on. If someone can live with all the drawbacks a console has compared to a desktop computer that’s their choice. But it certainly doesn’t say anything about what kind of a player they are. There are serious and casual players on all systems.

 

And if sometimes it looks as if I dislike casual players that’s only because the large number of casual players affects how the big developers choose to design their games. There is a tendency to cater more and more to casual players and less to more serious or hardcore players. So, there is of course nothing wrong with casual playing, but the side effects of most people being casual players does somewhat lower the fun I can get out of these games as I don’t like that approach. So I’m not angry at the players, but at the developers for only catering to one group of players while more and more ignoring the other. And Bethesda is a perfect example of that.

 

 

You man wanna look up DUST for FNV then.

 

If I ever find the time to play FNV I will certainly do that :smile:

 

 

Because most games are not made for realism and survival.

 

Yeah, but they should be :wink:

 

Look, that is the great thing about modding. We see something in a game that we don't like? So we sit down and change it. Now I still feel Bethesda could have included some survival features in vanilla FO4, but that is really not what this thread is about (well at least not initially). It is about me changing something that I don't like about FO4 and asking the community what they think about my suggestions.

 

 

Wait, how do you want to aim at realism and then make them weightless?

 

I thought that would be clear from my initial post, but maybe not. So I’ll try to further elaborate my thought process regarding this.

 

As you stated quite correctly, complete realism in a game can’t be achieved. There will always have to be compromises to keep the game enjoyable. When I look at the inventory system and gameplay mechanics of FO4 and what I think is wrong with them, I see that it can’t be fixed completely. So I have to come up with a satisfying compromise that will enhance the gameplay experience for me.

 

To achieve this I first look at what bothers me and then I try to come up with a solution to fix it. If it can’t be fixed I try to figure out if at least I could improve it. If that isn’t possible either I try to at least change it in a way so that it is no longer an annoyance.

 

In this case there are two things that bother me:

 

1. The ability to carry more weapons and aid items than would realistically be possible

 

To me it feels wrong to always have the right weapon for every situation, to always have enough aid and buff items whenever I need them. To me it feels wrong that I should be able to go on any quest without planning or preparing.

 

I really like limitations in games, even though they can be frustrating at times. I like them because they make me think, because they challenge me to make the right decision and force me to improvise when it turns out that I made the wrong one.

 

Now this can easily be fixed by limiting the carry weight to something realistic through adjusting the related stats, perks and buffs. This limits the players ability to carry multiple weapons and a lot of aid/buff items and forces them to plan ahead and make hard decisions. In my eyes this would be a huge improvement over the current situation.

 

2. The constant hassle with all the junk I need to build and craft

 

So the game allows you to carry only a limited amount of junk based on how much you can carry overall and how much of that is already used for weapons, armor etc.. Now basically that would be ok if it would affect difficulty or have some meaning towards gameplay balance. However, the amount of junk you can carry doesn’t impact difficulty or gameplay balance in any meaningful way and requires you to more or less frequently go back to your base or one of your settlements to unload. In fact, the amount you can carry is completely arbitrary and neither reflects reality nor any difficulty or gameplay balancing need.

 

All it does is waste the players time by having them to constantly sort through their inventory to see what they can leave behind and having to constantly unload that stuff at a save location (base, settlement, etc.). Also, if not connected through supply lines one has to manually haul the junk between settlements if one want’s to build something at a new location. Which is fine, except it can only be done either in insufficient quantities requiring multiple trips, or by first scrapping everything since components are lighter than the original junk items and thus allow the player to carry much more. Both those options are extremely tedious.

 

Now there is no way to improve, much less solve this in a realistic manner that I can see. So I’m left with only one option. To try and change it in a way that at least improves the gameplay experience somewhat. This is why I came up with the idea to make it completely weightless. I mean let’s face it, in terms of realism it doesn’t matter if you can carry 200lbs of junk or unlimited amounts of it. Both is impossible, but the latter means much less hassle for the player.

 

So, yeah, weightless junk is unrealistic. But it is the compromise I have to make so I can at least limit the gear the player can carry. Overall I think this would feel much more realistic and balanced than the current situation. Now that is of course my opinion with which you don’t have to agree. And I’m open for better solutions if someone has one.

 

 

After level 20, you get a lot of caps and cash. If you looted everything and make sure to take the best from VAL/WT ratio.

It harder if you have a mini gun however.

 

Plus, don't try building a town or a big house from the start. Try making a shack, then expand.

 

Well I'm level 50 and still don't feel like I have enough caps to do it your way. We clearly have completely different play styles.

[djangoku]

I think one big issue with all this, and in detail with ammo, would be the difficulty balance. I mostly played on survival, where you meet legendary higher level enemies behind every corner, and you need lots and lots of ammo for every single one. Other things can easily managed with roleplaying itself. Who sais you have to build each and every settlement up to its limits? I only choose some of them, and transfer the materials from the others with provisioners. Next thing, use a companion to carry more things ( i play with low strength, too), buy shipments and so on. I build a main base with shops, so i have allways enough caps for everything, even without looting everything and fast travel orgies.

 

Dont get me wrong, i like "realism-mods", too. I would like to see a brahmin-follower to carry things, send settlers/minutemen in little groups to gather stuff. ammo can have a weight, but enemies would have to be balanced. aid-items can have, too, but in survival mode you must use some perks then, cause you dont stand a chance without lots of aid, armor and health. I guess this all would lead to a gigantic mod-project.

 

All in all, i think one could do such a mod, and i for myself would play it. But i can live with how the base game handles it, too.

[GnatGoSplat]

Resident Evil games also have a system where you can only include as much as will fit in your pack, and that includes ammo. It's almost a mini-game in itself finding best way to orient and arrange the packs of your and your companion.

I'm personally fine with it the way it is. I don't need that much realism.

 

Just thought I'd mention that if you have a companion, you can ask your companion to carry unlimited amount of junk. You can't transfer into their inventory more than they can carry, but you can ask them to pick up unlimited amount of stuff. That's not very realistic either, but since you're suggesting unlimited junk carrying capability, that's one way to do it without a mod.

[HandofBobb]

But if you’re willing to use fast travel that becomes a joke too. I mean we’ve certainly all done it. Just drop all your loot in a container near the fast travel point and once you’ve cleared out the area just fast travel back and forth until you have sold or stored everything. Rinse and repeat at next location. Or if you’re like me and don’t use fast travel you waste hours watching your overencumbered character slowly walking back to your base, carrying literally tons of junk.

 

And no, I will not max out the strength of my character by spending levels on strength. Because that this is even a possibility is an abomination of RPG mechanics. I have done it once (increasing STR from 3 to 4) because I got fed up by the problems the inventory system of FO4 causes and I still feel guilty about it. It’s just something that cannot be. You select your stats at the start and then live with them! But that is another discussion…

 

What's wrong with 'fast travel'?

Unless you're using The Institute, it's not teleportation.

Game time still passes, it's just your character crossing the distance without you having to control them. I'm all for immersion, but if you self-admittedly feel you've wasted all those hours, you could just go make a sandwich and let your character walk on autopilot for a while. and unless you're using motion control on a treadmill, you're not skipping anything meaningful- sure theres combats you miss, but that just means your character is more careful than you...

 

and you do realize, people get stronger in real life? I mean really- the average person in the modern world has a loadout of less than 10lbs- start lugging around 60-100lbs all day everyday and walking everywhere, and anyone would put on some muscle mass.

 

That said, I do wish the Strong Back perk didn't have a min ST requirement of 6- it seems really silly to have the first few tiers taken up by perks than enhance unarmed/melee damage, when a person geared for that would certainly buy more than a 1-2 STR...

 

The only really broken thing to me is that you never get MORE overencumbered- one coffee cup over the weight limit and i'm crawling across the wasteland, but 10,000 more coffee cups never completely weigh me down...

[JTL2]

 

The only really broken thing to me is that you never get MORE overencumbered- one coffee cup over the weight limit and i'm crawling across the wasteland, but 10,000 more coffee cups never completely weigh me down...

 

It does in the Bethesdaverse.... :laugh:

 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/y5C3itd89yY

Edited February 10, 2016 by JTL2

[theoneandonlyboiler]

I think one big issue with all this, and in detail with ammo, would be the difficulty balance. I mostly played on survival, where you meet legendary higher level enemies behind every corner, and you need lots and lots of ammo for every single one.

 

Which is why I will probably leave ammo weightless. But I will also have a look at difficulty settings. Just making enemies spongy has nothing to do with difficulty. Im thinking more along the lines of just increasing their damage output so that the player dies a lot faster while still being able to dispatch of most enemies with a reasonable amount of ammo usage.

 

 

Who sais you have to build each and every settlement up to its limits? I only choose some of them, and transfer the materials from the others with provisioners.

 

I'm only building up two at the moment, and a third one as peronal base. However I'm going way over the size limit with both settlements which is why I need ungodly amounts of materials. The larger one already rivals Diamond City and I'm still building.

 

 

Next thing, use a companion to carry more things ( i play with low strength, too), buy shipments and so on. I build a main base with shops, so i have allways enough caps for everything, even without looting everything and fast travel orgies.

 

I always have a companion with me and have all the shops set up at my two settlements. And I do buy shipments of stuff I don't get enough of from looting (wood mainly). However, I like the scavenging, it's how I want to play. And Bethesda clearly intended this to be a gameplay option. They just didn't think it through which is why it needs fixing.

 

 

Dont get me wrong, i like "realism-mods", too. I would like to see a brahmin-follower to carry things, send settlers/minutemen in little groups to gather stuff. ammo can have a weight, but enemies would have to be balanced. aid-items can have, too, but in survival mode you must use some perks then, cause you dont stand a chance without lots of aid, armor and health. I guess this all would lead to a gigantic mod-project.

 

Oh yes, the brahmin follower. In FO3 I had Bess the brahmin installed for that exact reason. See, this is not the first time I'm doing a mod like this. I did something similar in FO3 and then used the brahmin mod to counteract the low carry capacity. This was really great, just traveling around the wastes with my faithful Bess. I'm sure we will see something like that for FO4 to, or maybe I even try it myself. Shouldn't be too hard i guess.

 

And you're right, once one starts to mod the game for more realism it can tear down the whole balancing (such as it is). Which is why I will leave some things alone as it would just have to much of an effect on other aspects of the game that I simply don't have the time to mess around with. Sure, I would love for ammo to have weight, but the consequences on balance this would have in combination with the severely limited carry weigth I'm planning would be severe. So I will probably leave it alone.

[theoneandonlyboiler]

Resident Evil games also have a system where you can only include as much as will fit in your pack, and that includes ammo. It's almost a mini-game in itself finding best way to orient and arrange the packs of your and your companion.

 

I've never played any RE game, but that sounds great.

 

 

Just thought I'd mention that if you have a companion, you can ask your companion to carry unlimited amount of junk. You can't transfer into their inventory more than they can carry, but you can ask them to pick up unlimited amount of stuff. That's not very realistic either, but since you're suggesting unlimited junk carrying capability, that's one way to do it without a mod.

 

I know that. But while that technically solves the problem it is a bit tedious to throw the stuff on the ground and then command your companion to pick it up. And back at the base you have to get it back from them. I'd rather have a system that works by itself and lets me play the game instead of managing inventories.

[theoneandonlyboiler]

 

What's wrong with 'fast travel'? Game time still passes, it's just your character crossing the distance without you having to control them. I'm all for immersion, but if you self-admittedly feel you've wasted all those hours, you could just go make a sandwich and let your character walk on autopilot for a while. and unless you're using motion control on a treadmill, you're not skipping anything meaningful- sure theres combats you miss, but that just means your character is more careful than you...

 

First, I really, really hate loadscreens. Every loadscreen breaks immersion and every fast travel causes a loadscreen.

 

Second, the wasteland is a dangerous place. Traveling from one location to another may get you ambushed or lead you through hazardous terrain (the glowing sea). Skipping that just doesn't feel right to me. And it really improves my gameplay experience to do all that walking/running around the map. If I want to go somewhre I have to check what time it is to see if I have enogh daylight left. I have to think about what I will have to take with me based on the route I will take and what I might encounter while traveling.

 

And it's not like I have never used fast travel. I did make heavy use of it in FO3 and Oblivion until I realised that it was hurting my experience. Then I stopped using it and had a much better time playing those games. I did revert back to using it after I started playing FO4 fo a while because now I had to take all that junk with me that in previous games could just be ignored. But again it started to frustrate the hell out of me so I started over with a new character, didn't use fast travel and I'm a much happier person because of it :wink:

 

 

and you do realize, people get stronger in real life? I mean really- the average person in the modern world has a loadout of less than 10lbs- start lugging around 60-100lbs all day everyday and walking everywhere, and anyone would put on some muscle mass.

 

Of course people get stronger. And it would be ok if FO4 had a system that let's you improve a stat by 1 point every few levels or so. But no, you can get your 3 STR character all the way up to 10 STR by level 8 if you want. Sorry but that's just silly. And you do realize that not all people can get the same level of strength? No matter how hard they train, some people are just weaker than other. I'm playing a rather small framed women as my FO4 character and for roleplaying purposes I find it just silly that she would have a STR of 10 at some point, no matter how much stuff she hauls around all day.

 

Also there is balancing to take into consideration. RPG's have always been about the players balancing out the character stats in a way that suits their play style. And I think it's a great mechanic because you can't create a perfect character. It will always have strengths and weaknesses and one of the challenges in RPG's is to live with the weaknesses or try to compensate them in some way. Giving the player the possibility to max out all stats takes that away, makes it meaningless.

 

What I would like most are derived stats that are tied to skills and activities. Like each stat is linked to some skills, those improve by actually using them (like in TES) and they also improve their linked stat. Like, say you use heavy guns a lot which improves that skill it would also improve your strength. Or if you run and jump a lot that would improve athletics and acrobatics which in turn would improve your agility. This would be much more natural and realistic. But instead we have a system where I can gain levels by building stuff and then improve my rifle skills with the xp earned. Yeah, sure, whatever...

 

 

The only really broken thing to me is that you never get MORE overencumbered- one coffee cup over the weight limit and i'm crawling across the wasteland, but 10,000 more coffee cups never completely weigh me down...

 

Well, best would be if your character would get slower the more it carries up to the point where it can no longer move. That damned threshold up to which it suffers no penalty whatsoever is one of the dumbest things anyone ever came up with.

Edited February 10, 2016 by theoneandonlyboiler

[GnatGoSplat]

I know that. But while that technically solves the problem it is a bit tedious to throw the stuff on the ground and then command your companion to pick it up. And back at the base you have to get it back from them. I'd rather have a system that works by itself and lets me play the game instead of managing inventories.

 

 

Yeah, it's definitely a bit tedious. I usually skip the step of having to throw stuff on the ground by having my companion get it in the first place, but routing issues, their slowness to follow orders, and the fact they can only pick up one item at a time when overloaded probably doesn't really make it any less tedious than just dropping the stuff on the ground.

 

I think the brahmin follower idea sounds the most realistic. I can envision carrying capacity upgrades in multiple stages. First, you just have pockets. Can't carry anything but a few pounds max. Then you can buy a backpack, which maybe increases carrying capacity to 25-50 lbs depending on size of the pack. Then you can get a brahmin with a small side-saddle pack that can carry more weight, 50-100 lbs. You can then buy him pack upgrades to carry 100+. The Provisioner brahmins look like they're carrying 1000 lbs. Maybe it could be upgraded with things like super strength cybernetic implants or adamantium skeleton to carry multiple thousands of pounds. If you overload him, it starts to affect his speed. Say, a couple hundred pounds overloaded, he's moving very slowly. More than that, he just sits on his ass and refuses to move. I'm liking the brahmin idea, I would use such a mod.

[xXHertzyXx]

Hey, thought I would throw in my two cents. First off, I would love an inventory overhaul like you are suggesting. As an avid ARMA and DayZ player..and most every other "hardcore" game kind of player, I respect a good level of realism in my games. When I polish up my skills I plan on releasing military oriented mods to the nexus. So these realism changes (inventory, bullet damage, sleeping/eating req. mods) will be quite useful.

In terms of the junk and ammo it is quite a predicament. But, if I recall correctly, in New Vegas there was a mod that made bullets weigh something but they weighed just little enough to not slow you down and kept you reasonably stocked (note: not 1000 .50bmg rounds). So this can be done for that aspect.

The Junk is another problem. Obviously, there is too much. The only way i see a work around for this is to have followers or something that can "hold" or "teleport" gear for you. I'll leave the creativity of that idea to someone. But, i have few ideas.

 

and you do realize, people get stronger in real life? I mean really- the average person in the modern world has a loadout of less than 10lbs- start lugging around 60-100lbs all day everyday and walking everywhere, and anyone would put on some muscle mass.

 

 

^- In reference to this. I'm an active duty Marine, and I can most assuredly tell you that, our average gear (non-combat) is about: 40-50lbs. Flak with mags, kevlar, cammies, boots and rifle. Now a combat load. We are talking...rations, ammo, full protective gear, rifle, field gear is in all about 80 to 100+ lbs. Just so you know constant stress in the form of packs on your back from loads of 50+ lbs are guaranteed to give you nerve and spinal damage as well as bad knees and ankles. Primarily, because that weight is supported by your hips.

 

If the OP wanted to keep it real like. I advise you can run with 50-80 lbs, but after that, reduce character speed and at 120 completely stop movement.

 

anyhow, just my two cents.