Perhaps Fo4's problem lies in its inbalance of gameplay elements

[AnvilOfWar]

I have come to the conclusion after many hours of play that Fallout 4 isn't built for Fallout fans, or players of any of the previous games. It was built for a generation of twitch gamers who's first thought is too shoot something until it's dead. The limited "dialogue" system (and the fact that one can walk away from a conversation mid sentence), reinforces the "me first" design of the game. Bethesda seems to have designed Fallout 4 by focus group, toss in Minecraft, and radiant quests that are modern day analogues of Skyrim's "go kill this dungeon full of Draugr", and you have the core mechanics of Fallout 4. Bethesda mined the mod community of just about all the ideas at work in the basic design of Fallout 4, however they forgot one important fact. The modding community came up with all these good ideas to expand upon the previous games of 3 and New Vegas, because in BOTH of those titles there is enough meat on the bones to be a good product.

The nonsensical settlement system was pushed far too much, you have a single scrap of land like "Tenpines Bluff" with 3 rows of tato's and a shack, in the middle of nowhere, that for some reason a caravan travels too why? It's in the middle of hilly terrain quite a bit far from any road. However you have places like Downtown Concord that could have been cleaned out of the raiders and made back into a functional town, right on main roads. Far too many "settlement" locations and quite a few of them are in some of the most badly defendable positions possible. You have Diamond city, and Goodneighbor as two of the biggest functional "non" settlements around, compare and contrast that to Bethesda's own work of Megaton, Rivet City, Underworld, the Citadel, Tenpenny Tower, Paradise Falls, The Temple of the Union/Lincoln Memorial later. Fallout 3's locales of settlements and cities are varied and unique. Every other location in Fallout 4 is either a possible settlement or a structure to explore and kill all the raiders/gunners/ect who have set up shop there. However none of those great locations can be claimed and turned into a settlement. Big defendable or otherwise important places where one might find strong walls and a roof, are enemy only compounds, small scraps of land in hard to reach places are your settlement choices. Doesn't make much sense.

Edited June 27, 2016 by AnvilOfWar

[gamefever]

It seems to me that a whole lot of people have a whole lotta strong opinions.

 

The game has decent balance in regards to gameplay mechanics and being well an actual game....

Thing is that........Fallout as a FPS game that it is now has a very strong camp of mod authors and fans that expect a true to life hardcore experience that implements a devastating rule set that in fact isn't pleasurable for quite a lot of people...I should know I've played numerous overhauls for the previous games.

That said the ruleset for combat is well done right for a large audience but falls flat of expectations of a true gritty survival game.

 

The Bob the Settlement Builder Experience....

Oh boy one of the greatest new game mechanics to hit the world stolen from a mod author no less! But that's not all folks cause we're going to outright fail to implement this properly by not allowing millions of end-users the ability to simply place objects as you please into "YOUR GAME WORLD" nope...Sorry cant place there.

The worst part of it is that we PC users had that fixed Day 0 minus 5 more than likely.

Yet here we are today looking at another what one or two more DLC drops coming down the pipe and still millions of console gamers cannot place objects as they please....Bethsada totally dropped the ball here....So basically you have millions of very jealous people looking with envy at about less than 200,000 PC users perhaps even fewer than 50,000 that can and do get a whole lot of enjoyment out of the Settlement system cause Mods.

Top that off with the fact that only about half of the Workshop Content is actually something new that we would want and the other half packaged is something that again we mod authors could just grab outta the games resource files and plop into the game....That topic that alone has most people raging about the DLC and the fact that they paid money on something that did not offer something unique to the game.

 

The Workshop DLC, half the items already implemented by mods. Didn't fix a core issue with Settlement Building. Offerred a truly half baked Arena System....Definitely something one modder could have made.

 

Automatron....Another fine example of mod theft of course I get that many would disagree and that's fine by me...but that stigma that stigma sticks here and it doesn't matter if you or I don't like it... The sad part is its actually a good DLC for what it offers but its that stigma that its a stolen idea that makes this good DLC stink like dung when people talk about it.

 

Farharbor....Its a good DLC and definitely shows but its like putting a fire hose into the mouth of a man dying of thirst....Its a tad too much too late. Here you finally get to have diverse options but sorry its coming in late to the party and the worst yet is the real kicker that makes people mad....This might be the only DLC offering real RPG and Story elements.

 

Now here's the thing...

The real issue is this, they opened a can of worms on the world by presenting Mod Author creations to well the whole dang world. My next door niehbor knows about mods, the girl I took a class with knows about mods, and the guy at the hardware store knows about mods.

 

Bethsada and in fact the entire gaming Industry now has to compete against us. There's a lot I can say on this....I'm going to try to keep it short....

 

Since there are in fact Professional people that do in fact make mods....You the end-user are getting an overdose of some cool cool stuff....The issue becomes that you get used to getting it for free.

So now you have something to throw into said Paid Professionals face that they messed up.

 

You don't like something they fell short on, This and That Mod Author did it better....Not just a little better either....Mind Blowing better, I almost didn't survive the experience better and the whopper is....I got it free.

 

That has had a profound effect on how the modding community feels about game development...You gotta bear in mind that's a tough field to get into and they do a lot to keep people out....That of course results in stagnation...You know all about how games get boring and it feels like each new release is the next let down. Mod's compound that issue and no they don't resolve it....Mods make it worse.

 

But the mods keep the life of the game going Gamefever!!! You No know what your saying!!

Actually I do know what Im saying...Im going to say it now differently to help you understand just the lengths of control that are being put into place.

Consoles only get 2 GIGs per game installation of mods.....

My Skyrim installation before last, was 200 Gigs of information on top of what a 5 GIG game?

Mod Users are not very good consumers.

Hence no unlimited space for console users.

Understand?

 

That's the entire Mod Authors Fix IT or Make it Better attitude....Its all based on resentment, and you can believe that some of those mod authors are resentful.

 

_______________

 

Edit,

 

There was also that main quest story...But that's been beaten so black and blue I don't feel like writing on it.

 

But yup, those game mechanics are pretty sound for a wide audience....Theres also the exploration, that's fairly top notch....

 

But the issue is there are sooo many other strikes against this game.

 

_______________________

 

So I've been around, I talk to people....

 

So here I am a mod author right....I have a few degree's and I'm back in school getting the next one....You know what I met a programmer, actually a few programmers...They were very envious of my body of work as a mod author...Took me a while to figure that out...

 

See the thing about being a mod author is that its a very solo experience, a self-directed experience....We are usually on our own...We might not even know how something is done and there probably are no easy answers for our intended outcome...

 

What do we do? We say F-It I'll figure it out and do it anyway.

 

From my own 10 years in with a Professional Career I can tell you with certainty that is a rare quality and its something that the Ivory Towers try to beat out of you.

 

People are not trained to be Solo Artists, leaders, or even successful.

Your trained to go to work for a corporation and struggle to make your ends meet....If you have an idea your idea becomes your corporations property.

 

That's life.

Edited June 27, 2016 by gamefever

[gamefever]

I have come to the conclusion after many hours of play that Fallout 4 isn't built for Fallout fans, or players of any of the previous games. It was built for a generation of twitch gamers who's first thought is too shoot something until it's dead. The limited "dialogue" system (and the fact that one can walk away from a conversation mid sentence), reinforces the "me first" design of the game. Bethesda seems to have designed Fallout 4 by focus group, toss in Minecraft, and radiant quests that are modern day analogues of Skyrim's "go kill this dungeon full of Draugr", and you have the core mechanics of Fallout 4. Bethesda mined the mod community of just about all the ideas at work in the basic design of Fallout 4, however they forgot one important fact. The modding community came up with all these good ideas to expand upon the previous games of 3 and New Vegas, because in BOTH of those titles there is enough meat on the bones to be a good product.

 

The nonsensical settlement system was pushed far too much, you have a single scrap of land like "Tenpines Bluff" with 3 rows of tato's and a shack, in the middle of nowhere, that for some reason a caravan travels too why? It's in the middle of hilly terrain quite a bit far from any road. However you have places like Downtown Concord that could have been cleaned out of the raiders and made back into a functional town, right on main roads. Far too many "settlement" locations and quite a few of them are in some of the most badly defendable positions possible. You have Diamond city, and Goodneighbor as two of the biggest functional "non" settlements around, compare and contrast that to Bethesda's own work of Megaton, Rivet City, Underworld, the Citadel, Tenpenny Tower, Paradise Falls, The Temple of the Union/Lincoln Memorial later. Fallout 3's locales of settlements and cities are varied and unique. Every other location in Fallout 4 is either a possible settlement or a structure to explore and kill all the raiders/gunners/ect who have set up shop there. However none of those great locations can be claimed and turned into a settlement. Big defendable or otherwise important places where one might find strong walls and a roof, are enemy only compounds, small scraps of land in hard to reach places are your settlement choices. Doesn't make much sense.

This,

 

Should have left this to you writers in the first place.

[midtek]

It seems whole discussions became ripe enough to think about what the big issue is.

Basically, this game meets pseudo-FPS, pseudo-bioware companions, graphic and combats up-to-date, and stuffs

which are all carefully selected to appeal to the majority customers in video games market.

That alone is good. In development view, Idealistic game is about satisfying 90% casual gamers.

Why? Because they are large number, pay same price yet play under 60 hours. No complaint, less issues, happy gaming.

Which means Fallout 4 is generally a good game. If you think otherwise, you are the minor. That's cool.

The problem might be this. The tendency of including settlements, settlements DLCs,

even more sandbox features(like Automatron) and bethesda.net becoming the integral part of the game;

which were independent and arbitrary territory of users who took those by their will.

It proves one fact that company finally overcame the dilemma and started thinking it as the golden opportunity.

It has bigger potentiality of success than itempacks model, but with relatively zero cost using the modders.

And the double if not three times effect to consumers, say, high effect of converting casual gamers to their addicts.

I am cool with Beth. Beth knows what they do. But there is ambivalent feeling to the person who called this decision.

And since Fallout 4 made big success, there are more to come. Hoping the majority is ready to this.

Well, I don't know. Seems cool.

[NexusFiles]

The gameplay is fine by me, however I find Fallout 4's greatest weakness to be the skill system rather than Preston Garvey and settlements. You see, rather than previous games like 3 and Vegas where the player maximized their favorite weapon-related skill as they saw fit, FO-4 instead allows you to midmax all of your weapon-related perks very easily at low levels. This is quite a problem since it almost completely destroys replayability and reduces the longevity of the game. Maybe the devs at Bethesda knew this hence the existence radiant quests which aim to extend the time spent playing the game, Also a bigger wasteland with more content and enemies that require more tactical thinking to beat would have balanced this issue.

 

I agree 100% with this.

 

As it lacks with weapon diversity, it also lacks depth when it comes to leveling up.

 

I find that once I hit level 20ish I hit a wall, it is no longer fun and you're more going through the motions just to complete quests and level up.

[blackninja50]

Fun fact fallout 4 dispute using almost four times the disk space as base Skyrim has 1/3 the quests and looks only a little better. also it's double the size of fallout NV and has half the quests, in fact only fallout 3 has less quests out of any Bethesda game.

[NexusFiles]

Fun fact fallout 4 dispute using almost four times the disk space as base Skyrim has 1/3 the quests and looks only a little better. also it's double the size of fallout NV and has half the quests, in fact only fallout 3 has less quests out of any Bethesda game.

 

I may have to install NV / FO3 again... TTW.

[CiderMuffin]

Fun fact fallout 4 dispute using almost four times the disk space as base Skyrim has 1/3 the quests and looks only a little better. also it's double the size of fallout NV and has half the quests, in fact only fallout 3 has less quests out of any Bethesda game.

Fun Fact, most of the quests in Skyrim was arbitrary chores like finding a book or killing something an NPC will give you.

 

Fun Fact, most of New Vegas was small fetch quests that rarely had any content in them.

 

Fun Fact, large amounts of data =/= "should have more quests" it just means it has more meat in other areas. Like environment, level design, texture work and mechanics.

 

Fun Fact, just having more quests =/= better or more content when most of the quests are bare-boned.

Edited June 27, 2016 by CiderMuffin

[NexusFiles]

 

Fun fact fallout 4 dispute using almost four times the disk space as base Skyrim has 1/3 the quests and looks only a little better. also it's double the size of fallout NV and has half the quests, in fact only fallout 3 has less quests out of any Bethesda game.

Fun Fact, most of the quests in Skyrim was arbitrary chores like finding a book or killing something an NPC will give you.

 

Fun Fact, most of New Vegas was small fetch quests that rarely had any content in them.

 

Fun Fact, large amounts of data =/= "should have more quests" it just means it has more meat in other areas. Like environment, level design, texture work and mechanics.

 

Fun Fact, just having more quests =/= better or more content when most of the quests are bare-boned.

 

 

"Fun Fact, most of New Vegas was small fetch quests that rarely had any content in them."

 

Well, that sounds like FO4 with Preston's b*tch quests.

[RS13]

The main problems, IMO, are

1. The quests are bland. They are almost entirely "kill the bad guys."

2. The main factions are all tied into the main quest. So when it's over, so are almost all your faction quests.

3. The dialogue options are bland. People often complain about there being no opportunity to be evil, but there's not even really an opportunity to be neutral--or to talk like you are. Accepting quests usually means saying something comforting like "Don't worry, I'll solve your problem." Why can't I say "Just have my caps ready."