Hear, hear. Quest and location packs brainstorming.

[ekRapid]

I think it's time we started making location and quests packs. As similar to the popular weapons and armor packs and skyrim interesting npcs.

 

In order to do so successfully we'll need to have the minimal standards of each pack.

 

The standards could vary depending on the pack.

 

For example:

 

1) Lore friendly pack.

 

2) Wild pack.

 

3) Satire pack.

 

I think, this will work more naturally than the format we currently use, where people download a mod, after they know exactly what it is, which greatly take away from the element of surprise. This will also ensure mods don't conflict.

 

What you guys think?

[noahdvs]

I'm not sure. What are the differences between the packs? A satire or "wild" quest could technically be lore friendly.

[ekRapid]

Some quests and locations could be in all 3. I mentioned satire and wild to keep the experience open. Fallout 2 was pretty wild and satire, and often not very lore friendly.

Fallout 3 was wild and lore friendly. New Vegas was lore friendly.

Fallout 4 is mostly lore friendly with the exception of the kid in the freezer which is satire and wild.

[noahdvs]

Some quests and locations could be in all 3. I mentioned satire and wild to keep the experience open. Fallout 2 was pretty wild and satire, and often not very lore friendly.

Fallout 3 was wild and lore friendly. New Vegas was lore friendly.

Fallout 4 is mostly lore friendly with the exception of the kid in the freezer which is satire and wild.

By lore friendly you mean serious? Because something can be silly and still be lore friendly for the universe the story is in.

[zanity]

Is there anything funny or satirical to be said about the current dull dead world of FO4? Even the most bored player will have already noticed the laughable nature of most of the included 'characters', and having quests point out their 'flaws' would be a lot like flogging a dead horse.

 

My point is that what FO4 really needs is much more co-ordinated modding, based on a serious attempt to re-storyfy the entire landscape. So a dedicated forum that discusses new STORY ideas, and how these stories lead to locations, characters and factions that can be distributed across the existing map or placed in new, purpose built settlements, buildings or dungeons.

 

Sort of what Beth should have done during the early design statge of the game, but never bothered to. The main problem with FO4 over Skyrim is that really good mods CANNOT easily insert themselves into any current in-play version of the game. They pretty much require the player to allow the mod to take over significant aspects of the game right from the start.

 

There's a lot of bad, hard-coded nonsense in the dreadfully made FO4, as the 'cell reset' and 'dragon-I mean vertibird flies thru buildings' bugs show. Really good mods have to cope with these problems responsibly to co-exist with one another, and be worth the effort for players.

 

Personally, I think the many downsides of FO4 mean that the game will never have good story mods- efforts will peter out, especially in the light of renewed interest in Skyrim when the special ed edition arrives. But I also know FO4 could be resurrected with the kind of co-ordinated story over-haul I suggest.

 

And I would seriously consider subverting the settlement building concept in an early phase of such mods- story mods could come with wonderfully pre-designed settlements that make the settlements into NARRATIVE driven locations capable of supporting many different character modding efforts. Well this would really need one modder team to focus on making a major town at the location of one of the settlements, and other modder teams populating the new town with stories, quests and characters.

 

The weakness of the vanilla game must NOT be under-estimated, or dismissed by a rose-tinted viewpoint that tries to suck up to Beth. Better story mods are an INSANE amount of effort, and it is the finishing of such a mod that is the trick, NOT starting it.

 

The strength of vanilla FO4 is the 'art' and the existing 'location' designs. The artists did a really good job, unlike everyone else who worked on the game. But the art is NOT story. It is as if in reality the world of FO4 is a blank piece of paper.

 

Take the 'racetrack' as a great example. Beth said 'let's have a robot racetrack', and then the story team went down the pub, and never bothered with the concept again. The level designers banged out a perfectly servicable location, and the script people put in a MINIMUM placeholder system, and that was that.

 

A worthwhile modder over-haul of the racetrack would actually need to involve many teams- and if done correctly the repaired location could be the source of many stories, characters and quests.

 

Like I said, a dedicated forum where people talk about such ideas in detail until they come 'to life' and modders start to divvy up the different required tasks until the overhaul can be done relatively quickly and cleanly and to a greater future usefulness.