Another Reason the Settlement System is Crap

[charwo]

I know some people like to play dress up with the settlement system, I find it a very boring, very tedious not at all realistic waste of time. However, what I'm going to argue is that the settlement system in concept is flawed. Homesteaders made sense in Fallout 2 because raiders weren't that big of a problem around towns. Raiders mostly tried to hit the caravans in those long stretches between towns. Listen to this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBVGA8LQzUo

 

The whole talk is fascinating but the pertinent stuff is about 830 to about 11:30. Dispersed settlements don't work when you've got bandits everywhere. People historically congregated in highly defended settlements on hillsides and on islands. So Spectacle Island makes sense except it would already be inhabited. And I can't emphasize this enough, most of Boston would fortified with people taking to the fields in the inner suburbs and any urban agricultural facilities during daylight hours. The idea of creating a settlement that close to Boston makes no sense: no one in their right mind is going to 'seek shelter from the wasteland' because those people have already been raped and murdered 180 years ago. Outside of heavily fo tried cities with jury-rigged urban agriculture, there won't be enough people to go out and homestead. Without large fortified towns, there's no trade and thus no raiders. Tribals maybe, but you're talking at least a week from Boston by foot, and no open world space is large enough to accommodate it.

The idea that homesteading would be an attractive option for wastelanders when there's the relative safety of Boston settlements is really really dumb. As bad as Goodneighbor is, it's safer than the Slog, or Abernathy Farm, or Sanctuary. Either it's safe enough to homestead and thus raiders are consigned the borders of the map, or it's not, in which case the rational thing is hole up Boston.

Boston, unlike DC, is not a warzone on it's last legs. And it shouldn't play like a warzone.

[Moraelin]

WTH is your problem, Beavis? Seriously.

 

It's a feature that you never had to actually use. And it's a feature that let Beth not only sell the game to more people, but also sell content packs just selling the existing assets again.

 

Far from taking anything from you, it actually allowed them to have a higher budget, and pack more contents like quests or even different types of pieces of buildings.

 

Not only you didn't lose anything from its being there, you actually got more of everything else than in Fallout 3 and NV COMBINED. More lines of dialogue, more quests, more random encounters, etc.

 

Why? Because other people paid for that settlement system, silly.

 

So again: WTH is your problem? Don't you get tired of whining like a little... err... female whelp that OMG someone put something in a game without consulting your highness first?

[Moraelin]

That said, eh. None of the settlements in this kind of games makes any sense. Whether it's Fallout or Skyrim or Oblivon or even Morrowin, the fact is, they're massively scaled down.

 

If you want to go all science on it, even the most primitive tribes IRL tend to hover around 150 members, which is the Dunbar Number. Look it up. It's the limit where you can know everyone, and things work just because everyone knows everyone.

 

Thing is, even the Imperial City in Oblivion doesn't have anywhere NEAR that. I repeat, it's not just that it's smaller than RL villages, it's smaller than what you'd get if you dropped some people with no knowledge at all of any organization or state or law enforcement into a jungle.

 

And it's not just Beth games. Interplay's settlements also never had any believable number of people, and I mean in ANY of their games, not just Fallout. Nor do more modern games like The Witcher III. Hell, even games whose whole POINT is simulating everyone in a settlement -- e.g., the Stronghold series -- don't come anywhere NEAR a believable settlement size.

 

Which brings us back to FO4: yes, the settlements are scaled down here TOO. You have a number of unrealistically small settlements instead of one single big walled city. Same as in any other game. Same as in Witcher III, or any other RPG ever made.

 

And yes, it wouldn't make RL sense in any other game. INCLUDING previous Fallout games. The first settlement you encounter in Fallout 1 is Shady Sands. And it is both raided by raiders (the Khans to be precise) AND about to be overrun by radscorpions. And guess what? It's still a separate settlement.

 

And when I say it wouldn't make any RL sense, it's not just because they're under any realistic size, but the number of guards, smiths, etc, also can't possibly work that way for such small populations.

 

But everyone does it anyway, because (A) there isn't a computer in the world which could actually simulate some 10,000+ people (a more believable medieval walled city), and (B) it's not as much fun as it sounds to have to find the smithy among 1000 houses. Just watch some Let's Play series of Skyrim and see even experienced people, but still playing Skyrim blind, run around in circles for 10 minutes to find a specific house in a tiny "city" like Whiterun. Now imagine it being an actual city spanning a couple of miles and housing some 10,000+ people, and you may understand why nobody even thinks of doing THAT.

 

Again: that's how it works in all RPGs. If you have a problem with it, maybe the whole genre isn't for you.

[montky]

@ charwo

 

thanks for a lore reflection and a FO4 critique all in one.

those are some interesting perspectives of verisimilitude in the fallout setting of FO4.

 

as people can customize their settlements etc, each of those locales can be very different.

they could make them as defensible as they like it.

many settlements are para-settlements; disguise is part of their security.

 

 

 

several folks are planning mod-overhauls to change the CBD cells of Boston in FO4.

a lot of folks want Boston CBD to be like New Vegas - to have a perimeter wall, and loading screens and the like...

 

Then, there's Red Rocket Settlements,

UnderBoston, Enclave Returns, Institute Overhaul/University Point Restored (good institute/bad institute)

v111 overhauls, etc.

"Books" (schools), Ambient quests, the Bounty Board

 

Personally, I like how intuitive the Build menu is - it becomes almost a sidegame by itself.

I like the idea that players can dynamically alter their environment in real-time. It's only a few steps away from destructible terrain.

with live-enabled content and livestreams, the game might be dynamically alterable for the endgames etc.

that would make 'emotional investment' in the build menus and crafting system more meaningful I think...

 

I like the idea of Detente in Boston Commonwealth between different factions.

The BoS, Institute, Railroad, Minutemen, Good Neighbor, Diamond City, Atom Cats... they'd probably enter into the Boston Accords...

The Bad Institute, Gunners and Enclave might have an Axis Pact of mutual non-aggression...

Mr House is a force unto himself basically, as is Lorenzo and the Mechanist...

The Shi could have made a return, with Kellogg and Captain of Yangtze...

 

Yes, there's bad folks near Boston, though "the garbagemen", Regulators from each of the city-states, and third parties keep the balance.

 

Boston Commonwealth seems a lot more like the Ancient Greek city-states model.

a multipolar and multiparty system.

There'd be a lot more folks there. The Boston Commonwealth and CIT is a little like New Vegas in that,

they were 'lucky' and spared a lot of the horrors of pre2077 and early post 2077.

 

So, there'd be more settlers in the Boston Commonwealth than elsewhere.

If the Good Institute and BoS teamed up,

it would be the best possible opportunity for quality of life for

all lifeforms in the Boston Area. From there, they'd regenerate a broken world and spread out and restore a lot,

with the lessons they'd learned.

 

If settlements and freedom didn't exist, then it would be very easy for The Enclave,

or The Bad Institute, to very quickly seal off Boston under a dome and set to work finishing what they started,

all those years ago in 2077...

thats why the BoS came to boston, again.

To find out what was there, confirm their suspicions of synths and androids,

and discover the source of new FEV strains...

 

 

[Fkemman11]

I mean if you look at ealy American settlers as an example- they settled in areas that were bordered by Indians whom may not have been hostile at first but did not always tolorate "squatters" on lands they had traditionally considered thiers. Why did these people settle sometimes far away from larger more defensible urban areas? The main reason I would say is that they were willing to brave hostile Indians and harsh living conditions for the rich, fertile land needed to grow crops. Since many of them were not tradesmen or craftsmen then farming was one of their few alternatives. So I think the settlements that you see scattered around in the Fallout games does make sense. Besides, I like building in the settlements and anywhere else for that matter. :happy:

[dragonslayer2k12]

Large numbers of npcs can slow down the game because it is cpu intensive which is why settlements are so small just build something up and add over 30 settlers to it and keep building until your pc hits single digit fps. I think there was a sanctuary modder that posted this crazy pic of his sanctuary which he never left in the game just kept building it for months and his pc can barely run the game now. I would hate to see what any updates have done to his game lol. Until beth can fix their code so it ain't so sloppy and so cpu intensive we will have limits like this.

[snapper69]

Reading these forums, it's obvious that there are a significant number of people who are vociferous in their dislike of the settlement building feature, however, looking at the mods for settlements etc shows that there are a lot of people who enjoy that same feature.

 

Moraelin, I hope that you aren't refraining from using b***h because of what I said in the post about Dogmeat as a Human Female,that was in one particular contexr and anyway, I see that the modder has used it in the latest version.

[charwo]

WTH is your problem, Beavis? Seriously.

 

It's a feature that you never had to actually use. And it's a feature that let Beth not only sell the game to more people, but also sell content packs just selling the existing assets again.

 

Far from taking anything from you, it actually allowed them to have a higher budget, and pack more contents like quests or even different types of pieces of buildings.

 

Not only you didn't lose anything from its being there, you actually got more of everything else than in Fallout 3 and NV COMBINED. More lines of dialogue, more quests, more random encounters, etc.

 

Why? Because other people paid for that settlement system, silly.

 

So again: WTH is your problem? Don't you get tired of whining like a little... err... female whelp that OMG someone put something in a game without consulting your highness first?

That not how this works. This isn't how any of this works. The money to develop Fallout 4 came from games without a settlement system. And moreover, anything that is put in the game comes with the opportunity cost of other things. The side quest content in Fallout 4 is awful. It's almost all fetch quests, but let's assume the Bethesda people are lazy and wouldn't put any effort into writing good sidequests regardless. All of those assets that needed to be built could have been used to add in significantly more weapons or rideable horse or different ammo types, all of which were in other Fallout/Bethesda titles. They could have used that scripting time to build a pacifist set including non-lethal takedowns and ways to solve the main quest without violence.

 

And me paying 30 bucks for a season pass that was half settlement s#*! was insulting. At the very least that time and effort could have been used to amp up the writing and storytelling in Automatron.

 

That's 'my problem, Bevis.' This game is an insult. It's an insult to me as a Fallout fan, it's an insult to me as an RPG fan, it's an insult to me as a thinking person. Bethesda didn't even try in this one with the sole exception of Cabot House. DLC may be another issue, but the vanilla experience left such a bad taste in my mouth I'm ready to never buy another Fallout game made by Bethesda. If I'd only paid 20-30 bucks for this thing, I'd let it go, but I spent ninety bucks for this piece of s#*!, under what I would consider false advertising. Fallout 4 is not an RPG, it's a shitty Far Cry knockoff with an underwhelming Minecraft mode. Most importantly, I don't believe this world. In my head, I added green mods and working cities in Alexandria and the 8th ward and Baltimore just outside the Capital Wasteland's borders and the Fallout 3 made some kind of sense. Boston makes no sense, and there's not enough worldbuilding about the present or enough pathos with Father to make me give a s#*! about the Commonwealth.

 

The video I posted is one example of a basic failure to do research. To think about how all the parts of your worldbuilding fit together, to think about all the factions, where they come from, what they want, and is what they do and where they are the best means to accomplish their goals? Bethesda are good world bulders in Elder Scrolls, but they are HORRIBLE world builders in Fallout. Environmental storytelling doesn't matter if the story it's telling makes no sense.

[Moraelin]

Actually, expected revenue vs expected costs is exactly how it works. I don't have the figure for FO4, but Skyrim was around 90 million dollars last I heard. Fallout 4 has significantly more of everything, so probably even more. You don't put that much into the game if you don't expect to get at least as much back.

 

Ever heard of Return On Invesment? Look it up. Yeah, that's what the whole thing is about.

 

The notion that it just works from some fixed money you have from other games is bewilderingly nonsense. You don't have a fixed sum. You csn invest less if you don't expect to make that much in sales, or you can take a loan if you think it will be worth it, or whatever. And that's how the whole publishing business works too. Nobody just goes automatically "oh, we have X million, we'll just give you all our money as development costs" for the next game amyway, and most certainly not unless they're confident (justified or not) they'll get at least those X million back.

 

Repeating the same nonsense over and over again won't make it true. We're not in The Hunting Of The Snark, and you're not the bellman. Repeating the same stonking silliness three times doesn't make it true.

 

It's not just costs vs the fixed sum of however much you have in the bank at the moment, silly.

 

And here's a thought for you: actually, speaking as a programmer, making some rectangular bounding boxes snap together is trivially easy. Especially considering how much a pain in the butt it is to make them snap the way you want at times, I'd be seriously surprised if Beth paid more than a guy for a month for it. As in, if they did, that guy needs to find a new job. So we're talking thousands invested tops, vs a potential revenue of millions for it.

 

Millions which, again, are factored into how much you can invest into the whole. Mostly into other things.

[Moraelin]

That said, you're still going on about how you didn't get a pony? In a Fallout game? Exactly which other Fallout games had a horse you could ride -- hell, make that: had a horse at all -- to give you the idea to expect one in FO4? And we're in 2017 and you're still whining that Santa didn't give you a pony in 2015, when you had no reason to expect one? SERIOUSLY? Geeze, actual spoiled preschoolers don't whine half as much about not getting an actual pony.

 

As for the rest, as opposed to WHAT? Because it seems to me like whining that that rooster doesn't lay eggs, TOTALLY unlike all the other roosters, which also don't lay eggs.

 

Exactly how many more weapons did FO3 have, for example, once you count the different enough variants available through weapon mods in FO4, that you feel insulted -- insulted, I say -- that Beth didn't include more?

 

Fetch quests? Yeah, FO3 didn't have that many quests that weren't fetch quests either, did it? In fact, I distinctly remember it having a lot less. Yeah, bringing the sat dish for Three Dog or the declaration of independence for Abraham Washington were also fetch quests.

 

Peaceful ending options? Really? How many endings did you get in FO3 that didn't boil down to shooting your way through the Enclave and blowing up their base? Because I don't remember any. Did you find some way to peacefully convince the Enclave to play nice and share the water purifier with anyone? Please do share.

 

Hell, how many did you get in NV? Was there some option to get the Legion, NCR and New Vegas to play nice and share the power at the dam? Because I remember having to shoot my way through one faction or another no matter what I chose. SOMEONE had to get a kick in the pants. I just got to choose who.

 

Too much shooting, "Far Cry clone", "war zone" and all the other such nonsense? Well, how far did you get in FO3 without shooting someone in the face? Because I couldn't even make it out of the vault without shooting a bunch of guards. Remember those two that spawn when you open the vault door? Yeah. And NV was a literal war zone. Plus again, you couldn't even find your first clue in Prim without shooting a bunch of bandits.

 

Settlements being small and vulnerable among bandits? Exactly how big and defensible were Novac, Prim, etc? You don't think that having one sniper up in the lizzard made it impregnable, do you? Oh, and remember Agatha's home in FO3? That was a ONE person settlement in the middle of raider country. Yeah, right, raiders leave her alone because they like her violin music. Heh. Dukov's house? Yeah, none of those raiders living literally around the corner on the side of his house will kick his door in, because he's one bad-ass guy. Heh. Republic of Dave? Yeah, I guess it's ok to live across the street from Deathclaw country, because he put chainlimk fence around it :wink:

 

Etc.

 

So exactly what kind of confusion gave you the idea that someone owes you -- OWES, I say -- a bunch of stuff that wasn't in the previous game, and some which wasn't in ANY of the previous games?