Another Reason the Settlement System is Crap

[charwo]

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?

Here's the thing Moraelin: all of the stuff I wanted in Fallout 4 is all either in previous Fallout gmaes or in previous Bethesda games. You don't have to kill ONE person in Fallout 1, or New Vegas, you only have to kill one person in Fallout 2, non-lethal weapons were a thing in New Vegas, variant ammo as well, the choke out mechanic was in Dishonored, which Bethesda owns, and horses and melee kill animations were in Skyrim. Between this and the variety of weapons in Fallout 3 alone, I expected Bethesda to build on what they had, not subtract it to nothing. And yes, I expected a horse because in a post-apocalyptic world, horses make sense. So do carts and they can't even be bothered to put these on the Brahmin. If Bighorners and cattle can survive the end of the world, so can horses. And besides, it was previous Fallout canon cats were extinct, and Bethesda went right out and retconned that s#*!, which is one of the few good things about Fallout 4.

 

The problem with Fallout 4 isn't that it has fetch quests, every RPG has fetch quests. No, it's that every quest is a fetch quest, with exactly one way to solve it: shooting something in the face. But this in particular isn't about the bad writing or missed oppurtunites: many, many people have said their piece on it, and it's all true. No, I take issue with the notion that Fallout 4 is a great game, but bad RPG. It's not an RPG, and at BEST it's a mediocre game. It's mechanics have been improved one way only: the AI and shooting are lackluster instead of a clusterf*#@. But in everything, Borderlands 2 is a better game. It has more weapon variety: in pistols alone, Borderlands 2 has 9 different pistols, with widely varying properties based on the barrel. Fallout 4 has exactly two pistol types: the 10mm and the 44 revolver. Five if you count energy rifles cut down to pistols. Fallout 3 had five firearm pistols and two energy weapons. Borderlands 2 has four sniper rifles and four assault rifles, Fallout 4 has one each. Borderlands 2 had vehicles, Fallout 4 does not. Borderlands 2 had awesome and varied combat music Fallout 4 does not. Let's not touch on the writing, Borderlands is Tolstoy compared to Fallout 4. Borderlands shooting and looting is way more satisfying than anything in Fallout 4.And Borderlands 2 is more believable and consistent world than Fallout 4, and that's a very, very low bar. In every way, Borderlands 2 isn't just a better game, it's so much better that there is no comparison between the two

 

See, modders don't owe me a thing. That's why I never demand, I never complain about mods. I may ask, but no more. But when a company takes 90 dollars of my money and I get a game that is this sloppily thought out, sloppily designed and without things previous installments had and Bethesda could have easily put in, then yes, I *AM* entitled to a better game. We all are. This game is pathetic, it's awful. This is a game so bad, that to make the vanilla experience right, the entirety of the game would have to be junked. And what's more, the game's supposed strengths are anything but. The environmental storytelling is detailed, and awful. It doesn't make sense. The worldbuilding is asinine. There is nothing good about this game at the end of the day. I have never been ashamed of a game I bought before. I'm ashamed I bought this.

[Moraelin]

1. Let's get that $90 figure you wave around out of the way already. If you were to buy only the non-workshop expansions separately, Far Harbor was launched for 25 dollars, and Nuka World was 20$. (Well, 24.99 and 19.99.) So you're butt-hurt for... what reason? That you got $45 worth of those alone for $30, but OMG it came together with other stuff you didn't want too?

 

Excuse me if I'm unimpressed by a complaint that boils down to OMG, they only gave you 50% more than you paid, even if you ignore the workshop add-ons. And OMG, on top of giving you more value than you actually paid, they dared ALSO include some stuff that you personally didn't want. Oh the HORROR... That's not being cheated, that's being entitled.

 

2. Nobody misled or made you buy the season pass, so a bit of sense of personal responsibility would be nice. YOU decided to buy some content in advance without even knowing what it would be. That was YOUR decision to take a risk. It's not like Beth made it mandatory to buy the season pass. Nor did they say there would be something else in it. Nobody cheated or misled you. YOU took a gamble and it didn't pay off. It's not Beth's fault. It's like getting butthurt that Nintendo took your money for a pack of Pokemon cards and it didn't have the one you wanted. Well, as long as they didn't tell you that you would, how is it their fault?

 

And frankly I'm sick and tired of hearing for a year and a half how it's Beth's fault if you didn't guess right.

 

3. What existed in OTHER game series is irrelevant. Most people bought and expected FALLOUT 4, not The Elder Scrolls 6: Boston. And viceversa. When I buy a TES game, I don't expect it to have terminators (no less than 5 Terminator games are also among previous Beth games), nor let me drive cars (like some of those other Bethesda games did, the Terminator ones included), nor do I expect piratey adventures in the Carribean (Pirates of the Caribbean is also a previous Beth games.)

 

Fallout is a totally different game series, which never had horses. Not only you couldn't ride them, but they flat out didn't exist. So there was no more reason to expect you'd get horses in the next Fallout, than there was reason to expect necromancy or Dragon Shouts.

 

Could they have added horses or dragon shouts or soul gems? Probably quite easily. But they have no duty to do so, nor does it make it sloppily designed if they don't make it a big nonsense mix of every previous game they ever had. If their view of the world doesn't include horses, and neither did Black Isle's view of it for that matter, then that's that.

 

I mean, WTH, _I_ would have liked the pseudo-norse thing from Skyrim and the Daedric artefacts if anyone asked me (I might port my Goldbrand, now that I think about it), oh, and vampires too, but you don't see me getting butthurt because Beth didn't include stuff from a whole other game series. Would it have been a big problem for them to include the vampyrism animations? No. Do they have a duty to? I don't see how that computes.

 

4. And being able to finish the game without shooting anyone... yeah, if you knew exactly where to go, and exactly what to say on a couple of occasions, sure, you could finish Fallout 1 and 2 without killing anyone or almost anyone. Yeah, in FO2 you could set your stats just right to outrun the tutorial ants, and just head south and a bit west for no in-character reason if you knew exactly where to find the Enclave outpost, and skip most of the game. IF you were lucky to not get killed in a random encounter. But that's not how most people play any game. That's a "look at me how I meta-game it based on knowledge my character wouldn't have" gimmick. Anyone whose idea of an RPG is doing that, doesn't have half a clue about what the first two letters in RPG stand for.

[Fkemman11]

I'm just trying to figure out why ANY game would give you many different options for lethal weapons and then stress non- violent solutions to all obstacles in the game. You are given a few ops in FO4 that allow for a peaceful resolution. The thing is that is not what FO4 is about. It is about a war-torn world where survival depends on an attitude of "shoot first" yada yada. Could Beth have gone a different direction with this game? Sure. The fact is that non- violent solutions aren't that appealing in this game. It is much easier to shoot that MF in the face than to deal with their BS. The characters lack of depth in most cases do not compel a player to care.

 

Now as much as I would like to see staples of other games in FO4 I think that throwing in the coolest aspects of other games detracts from each games individual flavor. Fallout is diluted enough in some ways without adding elements from other games IMO. If anything Fallout games need to be more of a departure from other series- not less. :ermm:

 

PS I would also like to have a horse in the game. But I understand why the didn't do it. Some semblance of lore needs to be maintained.

[charwo]

And frankly I'm sick and tired of hearing for a year and a half how it's Beth's fault if you didn't guess right.

 

Of all the asinine points you made, I'm going to address this one. I suggest you just not read what I post in this forum, but unless someone gives me ninety bucks so I can get my money back and delete this piece of s#*! game off my Steam account, I'm going to continue to complain. Loud and long. If I got that money back, I'd be more than happy to never again speak of this game. I will take good mods in lieu of a refund, but I'd rather have a refund. I'm pissed because I was swindled. I expected an RPG, which even Fallout 3 was. Had I had the faintest idea what this game was, I would never have bought it. Not until it was 20 bucks for a bundle. And then only if the total conversion mods were especially good.

[montky]

@fkemman11

indeed re post #13 of this thread;

in past FO titles, it is possible to bypass combat in a lot of situations, if your persuasion score is high enough...

granted, some of that will likely require save-game abuse (failed that vital persuasion check? quit, reload, try and try again until the law of averages applies hehehe).

I like being able to have some 'what the stuff?!" situations, where people aren't insta-blasted

sometimes, roleplaying FORPG'ing as a 'paragon of virtue' is more fun and challenging hehe.

Sadly, 90% of the wasteland thinks in terms of a "Cartesian punnet square" for potential futures. 4 options in the dialogue box, 4 options to resolve things etc... not an infinitude, not a continuum. 4 options.

 

banishment is a recurring motif in Fallout and much of Ellison's work.

FO1 - even if you win with the best possible ending, your reward is... banishment to Vault City.

 

in FO3 and FONV, you could 'masquerade' as other factions, if you had face-covering disguises from that faction.

there was Karma system etc.

I understand FO4 didn't include a lot of those things, 60% because of "rapid prototyping", 40% because of "wanting to try new things"/"unwilling to risk overall game stability for features not a large percentage of the present target audience would use"..

.I'm confident a lot of those features will emerge for FO4 in time, and with those mods,

modded FO4 will form part of Fallout lore and Fallout canon/continuity for a lot of folks.

as it stands though,

 

-----

base FO4 is to 'fallout', what the different Era-themed trilogies of StarWars are to Star Wars,

or what each of the themed series of Star Trek is to Star Trek...

there's a lot of debate as to the continuity of FO4 and all.

[AGreatWeight]

@Charwo,

whilst I sympathize with some of your grievances (yes, Fallout 4 isn't the best Fallout game - but I've got nearly 2000 hours worth out of it which is unarguably great value for money imho) I have a hard time understanding how after 400+ days, your still complaining about a game that you made a decision to buy blindly. Of your own free will. No one forced you to, you weren't swindled, you were impatient and made a choice as a consumer (buying before having an informed opinion) based on your expectations, and possibly driven by the media frenzy building up the game hype before release.

This is what it boils down to, your angry at yourself for having preconcieved notions & expectations which turned out not to match the reality of what the game was/is. You made what you now know with hindsight you consider a mistake by purchasing it.

[CiderMuffin]

There were still a lot of raiders in Fallout 2 and we saw Homesteaders in Fallout 1 when raiders were an even bigger problem. People are always going to journey out into the unknown and hostile lands to settle. Every settlement at one point was just a group of homesteaders looking for a better life and to create a safe haven from the harsh nature of the wasteland, we see this in every game and every game it still makes sense as to why people go out into dangerous areas to settle.

[charwo]

@Charwo,

whilst I sympathize with some of your grievances (yes, Fallout 4 isn't the best Fallout game - but I've got nearly 2000 hours worth out of it which is unarguably great value for money imho) I have a hard time understanding how after 400+ days, your still complaining about a game that you made a decision to buy blindly. Of your own free will. No one forced you to, you weren't swindled, you were impatient and made a choice as a consumer (buying before having an informed opinion) based on your expectations, and possibly driven by the media frenzy building up the game hype before release.

This is what it boils down to, your angry at yourself for having preconcieved notions & expectations which turned out not to match the reality of what the game was/is. You made what you now know with hindsight you consider a mistake by purchasing it.

I was expecting an RPG. Not a good RPG, this is Bethesda we're talking about, but a passible one that only left a mildly bad taste in my mouth, like Fallout 3. What I got instead was a supremely ugly, nonsensical, underpopulated badly written, badly conceived, idiotic shitshow with no real choices and exactly zero pathos. There's both zero choice and zero character development. That means, no RPG. And the side content was all fetch and kill quests. That I did not expect, not even from Fallout 3.

 

I want my money back, I was swindled. Yes I bought the game of my own free will, but you can't be swindled except by your own free will. Otherwise it's robbery. I was not robbed, but I was swindled. And ninety bucks is a lot of f*#@ing money to me. I'll never, ever make that mistake again. Never.

[Batdog]

You brought it before you knew anything about it. You were a careless buyer. You got burnt.

Why we have reviews, youtube video reviews/lets plays, Hell you could of asked a question in this forum and would of been givin an answer.

 

Learn your lesson and don't rush out and buy things before learning about what your paying for.

[Moraelin]

Of all the asinine points you made, I'm going to address this one. I suggest you just not read what I post in this forum, but unless someone gives me ninety bucks so I can get my money back and delete this piece of s*** game off my Steam account, I'm going to continue to complain. Loud and long. If I got that money back, I'd be more than happy to never again speak of this game. I will take good mods in lieu of a refund, but I'd rather have a refund. I'm pissed because I was swindled. I expected an RPG, which even Fallout 3 was. Had I had the faintest idea what this game was, I would never have bought it. Not until it was 20 bucks for a bundle. And then only if the total conversion mods were especially good.

Except, again, nobody swindled you. If someone said "I'll sell you this Pokemon pack for $30, it's got a Mew inside" and there's no Mew, then that's fraud, and their fault. If someone sells you a mystery pack with no claim about what's inside, you don't get to complain that it didn't have the Mew you always wanted inside. Nowhere did they say it had one, or any other super-rare for that matter

 

Which is what you're doing. You're complaining that something you gambled on before there was ANY claim of what's inside, and in fact before most of that was even on the drawing board, didn't have what YOU wanted. Never mind that OTHERS wanted it, if YOU didn't, you're gonna complain over and over and over like a spoiled preschooler who didn't get a bike for Xmas.

 

Sorry, again, that's just you being an entitled brat. And sure, I can't keep you from complaining that the gods didn't give you more of a brain, but, eh, that just proves the point.

 

I was expecting an RPG. Not a good RPG, this is Bethesda we're talking about, but a passible one that only left a mildly bad taste in my mouth, like Fallout 3. What I got instead was a supremely ugly, nonsensical, underpopulated badly written, badly conceived, idiotic shitshow with no real choices and exactly zero pathos. There's both zero choice and zero character development. That means, no RPG. And the side content was all fetch and kill quests. That I did not expect, not even from Fallout 3.

 

I want my money back, I was swindled. Yes I bought the game of my own free will, but you can't be swindled except by your own free will. Otherwise it's robbery. I was not robbed, but I was swindled. And ninety bucks is a lot of f***ing money to me. I'll never, ever make that mistake again. Never.

No, you just got something YOU didn't like. Guess what? You're not the yardstick. So kindly stop pretending that you are. The only "idiotic shitshow" is the one you're putting up.