2nd playthrough and got bored halfway through

[Deleted28731935User]

me and you both man its sad cause im still doing my 10th skyrim playthrough lol

[Boombro]

When I'm done having with the DLC my do my last Skyrim run.

[Zetsumi_Nihilus]

-Very few factions, and all inexplicably tied to the main quest, mutually exclusive save for a single exception, and therefore no room for experimentation with factional relations.
-Very limited range for roleplaying, because the entire game revolves around GIVE ME BACK MY SON, and the posterior-backwards dialogue system plus the voiced protagonist leave little room for anything but it.
-Despite the entire game revolving around GIVE ME BACK MY SON, that plot thread doesn't actually lead anywhere. You get a reveal that was obvious to anyone with more then half a brain cell from the very start, then the game just kinda shrugs and forces an inorganic and rushed feeling endgame questchain.
-Overall the story somehow manages to, despite forgoing any player freedom in their character's character and role in order to be more narrative-driven, be less narrative driven then previous games. Mostly because that 'narrative' consists of a single page on which is written 'The protagonist looks for his/her son.'
-Extremely limited quest diversity, see: ANOTHER SETTLEMENT NEEDS YOUR HELP..
-Potentially ground-breaking new elements, such as settlement building, that could otherwise add a lot of playtime are overall rushed, poorly implemented, and lacking in any depth, complexity, or user-friendliness.
-Serious lack of worldbuilding, background information, and backstory.

Then again, I wasn't expecting anything else from it. As any long-time fan can attest, every Fallout/ES RPG Bethesda makes is less detailed, smaller, more limiting, and more dumbed down then their last. Of course, they are much prettier though, because graphics > substance, as far as the majority of the consumerbase are concerned, apparently. Fallout 4 is just the latest step in this same pattern. The only reason I still spend money on them is the modding cult surrounding them, and even then, that's is starting to wear thin with how dumbed down and simplistic each new release is compared to it's predecessors. If not for the fact that FO4 looks to have been built from the ground up with modding as the core element, rather then an afterthought, I wouldn't have bothered with it. Probably not going to bother with ES6, at this rate they're going to strip out perks and the health/stamina/magic bars and just make a very, very pretty small island with a single town on it with a story about the fully voiced and non-customizable PC going to the village store to buy a new pair of pants but oh just wait until you see those 8k textures.

I'm exaggerating, of course, but nonetheless. There's a good reason the game is lacking in quest and characterisation content the way it is, and that's because games have to be made in a certain amount of time, or the technology used to make them becomes just a tad obsolete, and sales suffer because it doesn't have the latest most up-to-date shaders possible. And when more and more of that time is taken up making more and more detailed assets for the game, that leaves much less time to plan and implement an interesting plot, among other things. With FO4, particularly, it seems Bethesda also spread themselves a bit thin - they tried to do some ambitious stuff like the settlement system in addition to having good graphics, and it shows that they didn't quite have the time to do any of it as well as they could. I suspect they probably had some budget and time cuts along the way, too, probably around the same time that steam's 'Paid Mods' initiative ended up getting less then the warm reception they were expecting.

Edited March 23, 2016 by Zetsumi_Nihilus

[kevkiev]

-Very few factions, and all inexplicably tied to the main quest, mutually exclusive save for a single exception, and therefore no room for experimentation with factional relations.

-Very limited range for roleplaying, because the entire game revolves around GIVE ME BACK MY SON, and the posterior-backwards dialogue system plus the voiced protagonist leave little room for anything but it.

-Despite the entire game revolving around GIVE ME BACK MY SON, that plot thread doesn't actually lead anywhere. You get a reveal that was obvious to anyone with more then half a brain cell from the very start, then the game just kinda shrugs and forces an inorganic and rushed feeling endgame questchain.

-Overall the story somehow manages to, despite forgoing any player freedom in their character's character and role in order to be more narrative-driven, be less narrative driven then previous games. Mostly because that 'narrative' consists of a single page on which is written 'The protagonist looks for his/her son.'

-Extremely limited quest diversity, see: ANOTHER SETTLEMENT NEEDS YOUR HELP..

-Potentially ground-breaking new elements, such as settlement building, that could otherwise add a lot of playtime are overall rushed, poorly implemented, and lacking in any depth, complexity, or user-friendliness.

-Serious lack of worldbuilding, background information, and backstory.

 

Then again, I wasn't expecting anything else from it. As any long-time fan can attest, every Fallout/ES RPG Bethesda makes is less detailed, smaller, more limiting, and more dumbed down then their last. Of course, they are much prettier though, because graphics > substance, as far as the majority of the consumerbase are concerned, apparently. Fallout 4 is just the latest step in this same pattern. The only reason I still spend money on them is the modding cult surrounding them, and even then, that's is starting to wear thin with how dumbed down and simplistic each new release is compared to it's predecessors. If not for the fact that FO4 looks to have been built from the ground up with modding as the core element, rather then an afterthought, I wouldn't have bothered with it. Probably not going to bother with ES6, at this rate they're going to strip out perks and the health/stamina/magic bars and just make a very, very pretty small island with a single town on it with a story about the fully voiced and non-customizable PC going to the village store to buy a new pair of pants but oh just wait until you see those 8k textures.

 

I'm exaggerating, of course, but nonetheless. There's a good reason the game is lacking in quest and characterisation content the way it is, and that's because games have to be made in a certain amount of time, or the technology used to make them becomes just a tad obsolete, and sales suffer because it doesn't have the latest most up-to-date shaders possible. And when more and more of that time is taken up making more and more detailed assets for the game, that leaves much less time to plan and implement an interesting plot, among other things. With FO4, particularly, it seems Bethesda also spread themselves a bit thin - they tried to do some ambitious stuff like the settlement system in addition to having good graphics, and it shows that they didn't quite have the time to do any of it as well as they could. I suspect they probably had some budget and time cuts along the way, too, probably around the same time that steam's 'Paid Mods' initiative ended up getting less then the warm reception they were expecting.

 

I gave up on FO4 a while ago, for many of the reasons you listed. (Although with the "streaming" texture thing, it's not like they got visuals right either.) Now that I'm back to Skyrim, I'm remembering how awesome a Bethesda game can be.

 

And I must admit, again for some of the reasons you listed, I'm worried what this will all mean for ES6. I SOOOOO hope my fears are misplaced though, and we don't end up with a simplistic story, with an utter lack of side stories, that has your character going to various simplistic locations with the compensation being that you can build your own lavish castle and populate it with all manner of serfs.

 

If I had to bet though, I'd probably put my money on that being exactly what we're going to get, but I'm still hoping. I mean, FO4 does a lot of stuff right too. Environmental stuff like lighting, for example. And companion/NPC AI is way better than previous games. There's still a chance that Bethesda will take the good things from FO4 into ES6, without gutting the quest/adventure substance.

[Zetsumi_Nihilus]

 

I gave up on FO4 a while ago, for many of the reasons you listed. (Although with the "streaming" texture thing, it's not like they got visuals right either.) Now that I'm back to Skyrim, I'm remembering how awesome a Bethesda game can be.

 

And I must admit, again for some of the reasons you listed, I'm worried what this will all mean for ES6. I SOOOOO hope my fears are misplaced though, and we don't end up with a simplistic story, with an utter lack of side stories, that has your character going to various simplistic locations with the compensation being that you can build your own lavish castle and populate it with all manner of serfs. (If I had to bet though, I'd put my money on that being exactly what we're going to get.)

 

Whenever I want to remember how great a Bethesda game can be, I re-install Morrowind. I'm pretty jaded about the whole thing, but I feel the problem isn't going to get any better anytime soon. AAA developers are under a lot of pressure to release visual masterpieces, but as I've already mentioned, better graphics take more time, more money, and detract from the very finite amount of time they have to actually make the game before the software and engine they're working with becomes obsolete, meaning more and more time is dedicated to visuals and less and less time is spent literally everywhere else. The cost of making a game is going up and up, and the process is becoming harder and harder, and more time-consuming, as a result. They have to guarantee they can make their money back somehow, and at the very least if I have anything positive to say about Bethesda's trends in recent years, it's that they've sacrificed elsewhere to avoid doing so with microtransactions, cutting bits out of their games to sell off as DLC, and other underhanded tactics that most developers are not above resorting to anymore.

 

We can certainly say that the dialogue system and the plot/main character was met with less then universal acclaim, so hopefully they'll abandon that particular ambition and revert to a more player-driven approach to both. And the advantage with working in the ES universe rather then fallout is that they have a LOT of worldbuilding and lore already there, and it's just a matter of slotting it in where appropriate. Hell, they already have a great plot for the main quest there in the lore, ready to go - the Thalmor, the Towers, and the player trying to stop them from unraveling the world as we know it. Both Skyrim and ESO (Or so I hear, I haven't actually played ESO, MMO's are not my thing personally.) have been building the Thalmor up as villains for it across two games, as well. If they'll actually do a good job telling that story in-game, on the other hand...

[kevkiev]

Well, hopefully Bethesda can indeed piggyback on the "ready to go" aspect of the ES series and simply tack on the things that are done so well in FO4. And I don't mind resources being spent on great visuals, to me that's one of the things I really like about the Skyrim world. In FO4, I think it's actually that a lot of the development resources went into the whole settlement scene at the expense of building up interesting locations and creating interesting stories and adventures.

 

Maybe now that they have the building blocks of that aspect of crafting under their belts, they won't have to dedicate as many development resources to it in future games. But, when I look at the last 3 Beth releases including DLCs (ie Hearthfire, FO4 and Automotron), and considering that 1/2 of the upcoming FO4 DLCs is yet another crafting expansion, my concern is that Bethesda is going away from quests and adventures and focusing more on a somewhat militarized version of the SIMS. I realize that a lot of people like the whole crafting thing, and I don't mind either as long as it's ancillary to the game and not it's focus. I mean, I had fun building settlements in FO4, but without substance and story in the main game it all ended up feeling rather empty.

[CyrusAmell]

I am holding off on an entirely new 2nd playthrough, were I plan to be an Institute aligned character, until at-least Far Harbor has been incorporated. Automatron has already made interesting changes with regard to how one can establish settlements (example: Sentry Bot Provisioners) and I imagine Wasteland Workshop will build upon such contribution tremendously (example: possibly easy access to guard dogs and new building options). The new Survival Mode will also make the game more interesting from a tactical perspective, as now resources (and by extent settlements) will be even more important. Lastly, most of the weapons and armor in Far Harbor can be dispersed among normal npc using mods (if the game does not add them to level lists already).

 

As it stands, I am starting to get a *little* bored with my level 135 Railroad Character. I never go near the Castle for fear that Preston Garvey (who I sent there) or the Radio Freedom station will give me another settlement quest. I quite like Cait, but I think for my second playthrough I would like to match my character up with Curie (who usually agrees with most of my moral decisions and is not as annoying at times). Is it horribly ironic for an Institute aligned character to fall for Curie? Yes well, it's not like anyone will be able to countermand your decision by the end (nor does Curie seem to care).

[SayinNuthin]

Fo4 is just a hunting reserve/shooting gallery for me now, no more than that. Someone here uploads a new gun such as the spectacular LK-05 [http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10516/?] and I load it, .additem it and bimble around shooting some stuff until I get bored and go back to my GECK project in the Mojave.

 

No quests in Fo4 interest me, nor any NPC characters or vanilla assets. I've no interest in playing a weaponised version of the Sims so..

 

Meh! I keep watching here in the hope some of the brilliant (and they are going to need to be) members of the community can rescue this mess. Actually I'm gutted, Beth couldn't have made a bigger cockup of this, for me, short of making it online only.

[kevkiev]

Fo4 is just a hunting reserve/shooting gallery for me now, no more than that. Someone here uploads a new gun such as the spectacular LK-05 [http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10516/?] and I load it, .additem it and bimble around shooting some stuff until I get bored and go back to my GECK project in the Mojave.

 

No quests in Fo4 interest me, nor any NPC characters or vanilla assets. I've no interest in playing a weaponised version of the Sims so..

 

Meh! I keep watching here in the hope some of the brilliant (and they are going to need to be) members of the community can rescue this mess. Actually I'm gutted, Beth couldn't have made a bigger cockup of this, for me, short of making it online only.

 

Kinda strange, but the more I play Skyrim again the more my, already low, opinion of FO4 plummets. Other than some of the things i mentioned - for example, Skyrim with FO4's liighting and companion mechanics/AI (and overall NPC AI), would be sooooo amazing. (Especially the companion mechanics and AI. I'm now so reacquainted with the Skyrim companions' "spin of confusion" lol.)

 

But, yeah, I think given some time there should be some great added mod content. I plan on giving FO4 another try when LlamaRCA brings her Willow companion expertise from the Mojave into the Commonwealth. And I know Mike Hancho (Rebuild the Lucky 38/ Helgen Reborn) has a few plans for FO4 although he mentioned that, unfortunately, he won't have the time to do anything as extensive as Helgen Reborn. And there are lots of other great adventure modders out there.

 

The large amount of unused terrain and existing buildings should lend themselves to some nice adventure mods without having to build completely new lands. Or maybe take advantage of how unused the underground is - a World of Pain type mod in the Commonwealth could be pretty amazing.

 

That said, though, 2 of the main irritants that made me flee the Commonwealth was FO4's terrible rendering of textures (and meshes) and the related issue of borked weapon switching via hotkey. At the beginning, those things just kinda bugged me, but it got to the point where they sucked out a lot of the enjoyment from the game. Maybe that was just me though - those might be minor issues to a lot of people. And I have very little hope that those things will, or even can, be addressed by Bethesda in a patch. Although, I suppose if the mod is fun enough, maybe it'll actually overcome living with those issues (hence my looking forward to Llama's companion mod). And I guess content that doesn't occur out in the open world won't face that problem nearly as much.

[SayinNuthin]

 

 

 

But, yeah, I think given some time there should be some great added mod content. I plan on giving FO4 another try when LlamaRCA brings her Willow companion expertise from the Mojave into the Commonwealth. And I know Mike Hancho (Rebuild the Lucky 38/ Helgen Reborn) has a few plans for FO4 although he mentioned that, unfortunately, he won't have the time to do anything as extensive as Helgen Reborn. And there are lots of other great adventure modders out there.

 

 

Willow equivalent would be a huge improvement but I think its going to take work by Someguy2000, MGE and djmystro to put some meat on this game's scrawny frame.

 

To be completely frank though it is Dragon Age Inquisition that sh*tcanned Fo4's dismal story for me. A game where what you did had consequences was.. world shaking.. So DAI can't be modded beyond a few hairstyles and outfits, the awesome narrative (and telling of) has had the effect of raising my personal bar to levels Bethsoft couldn't see with a 4-12 scope!

 

But your right the horrible texture glitch is a huge turn off, as is pulling weapon out of your.. where-ever.. and the 18??? key interface and.. and.. and.. Lots and lots of little stuff which will probably be fixed, however the one thing I can't see anyone fixing is a subtle problem, 4 hours to install? Is that just my setup because it amounts to a horrible restraint on what I can do to the game - or what I'm prepared to risk doing!

 

I can uninstall and re-install FoNV, And all my essential mods in 40 minutes flat, which means I can cheerfully wreak the whole installation and fix it before I need to break for a cuppa. Four hours.. means I've got to be a lot more careful which doesn't encourage experimentation knowing will need to spend all night looking at a progress bar if I screw it up and that isn't going to improve with DLCs is it.