Why the Preston Garvey hate?

[Moraelin]

You only get those quests when you 1) talk to Preston, 2) go to the Castle, or 3) turn on the radio to the Minutemen station. At no point do they track you down as you cross the Commonwealth and force quests upon you. If you don't want to do the quests, stash Preston somewhere, don't go near the Castle, and keep the radio on a different station. Issue solved.

As to the complaint about the settlements, if you're still having to put that much attention into it, you're doing it wrong. I've built up every single settlement except the Mechanists (because of the floor glitch), and once you get the proper number of beds, food, and water, and get them assigned to their jobs, they are a completely maintenance-free source of caps, with the exception of the few times you get a message that one is being attacked... and now, there's a chance they don't even need your help when they are attacked, as they have a chance to fight off the attackers themselves.

It sounds more like you didn't like the game as a whole, and are grumpy about not being able to play the bad guys. Which has little to do with Preston.

Well, I don't know about him, but I agree with everything you've quoted from his message, yet actually liked the game quite a bit. I just liked it quite a bit more after it dawned upon me to avoid Preston at all cost. There are plenty of things I personally liked. Preston's giving quests if I as much as walk past him, or make the mistake of actually taking him as a companion, or turn on that radio for the custom music, is not one of them.

 

And the possibility to not sign up, really, is not as much of a saving grace as you seem to think. Yes, you can avoid Preston or not get him at all. (I actually did a couple of playthroughs by now where I don't even have Concord as discovered on my map.) But it's a matter of hindsight. Unless you get the story all spoilered by reading some guides in advance, there's nothing in the dialogue to suggest that you'll have to avoid him if you say "yes". You have to first get thoroughly annoyed by him, before the thought occurs to stay away from the twit.

 

At the risk of repeating myself, it's unfair to try to give the player the blame for something that the player could not possibly foresee. Neither any RL experience, nor experience with other RPGs, gave any reason to suspect that that the option to say "no" would be missing from his dialogues ever after. I maintain that a reasonable person of average intelligence could not foresee it.

 

So essentially the supposed saving grace boils down to, 'it's your fault for not being clairvoyant'. Well, of course I'm not, but then if anyone were, they'd have won Randi's million by now. Having paranormal powers shouldn't be a requirement, so I fail to feel guilty at all for not having had paranormal powers when I first bought the game.

 

Besides, even if, as you say in message #30 I agreed to protect the settlements (never mind that actually I was asked to provide leadership for a organization), there are more ways to RP that. Maybe I lied. Maybe I just thought I'd get some power or resources to misuse for other purposes. Maybe I just thought I could send them to search for Shaun. Maybe I'm totally unfit for the job. Maybe I want to play more of a General Melchett from Blackadder:

 

General Melchett: Are you looking forward to the big push?

Private Baldrick: No sir, I'm absolutely terrified.

General Melchett: Ah, the healthy humor of the honest tommy. Don't worry my boy, if you should falter, remember that Captain Darling and I are behind you.

Captain Blackadder: About thirty-five miles behind you.

Actually being competent and selfless and brave is by far not the only way to RP a general :tongue:

 

What one COULD say is just that agreeing to do the job and then ignoring it isn't particularly nice or honourable or stuff like that. But, hey, I can live with playing scum :tongue:

[Moraelin]

BTW, I'd also add that settlements being able to fight off attackers themselves is actually a very new thing. For the first half a year or so after release, defend quests would automatically fail unless you personally showed up, no matter how much defense you had. You could have 5 artillery pieces, literally 50 heavy turrets, and 20 people in pimped-up combat armour and with automatic .308 G3 rifles assigned to guard post, and... some crappy raider gang would loot the place and break your generator and half the turrets anyway, unless you personally showed up to defend it.

 

Mind you, kudos to Beth for making the settlements a bit more self-sufficient lately, but some of us had a very long time to form a bad impression of the Minutemen before that was the case.

[Fkemman11]

Somehow I get the impression that Preston is a virgin. This would go a long way towards explaining his wide-eyed view of even a post-apocalyptic world. That kind of idealism sort of dies after the rigors of family or a tough relationship. Hell even a tough childhood makes people much more skeptical of others motives. Lets see how optimistic he is after someone he cares about breaks his little heart or at least helps him understand that he needs to think more about his own and less about others. :tongue:

[Moraelin]

Well, maybe, but dunno... I don't mind him being naive. We'd be out of marks if nobody were :wink:

 

Plus, I kinda like a more traditional good-vs-evil kinda setting, rather than the usual case nowadays, where the good and honourable guy just gets beheaded in front of his children, barely a couple of hours or so into the series. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when good is at least a viable option. Oh, wait, that's just the brandy :wink:

 

I'd just like the game to acknowledge that I'm not necessarily going to the extreme of playing the personal saviour of all humans, even when I play good. Last time someone tried to save everyone, he got nailed to some wood for his efforts. Is all I'm saying :wink:

 

And especially after they released Nuka World, you'd think it would be obvious that not everyone is playing a good person, much less a saint.

 

Granted, since NW, Preston gets royally butthurt when you join the raiders, so that's one solution to the problem. Still, it would be nice to have a more middle-ground option to the problem too. You know, in between (1) being the saint that can't EVER say no to hoofing it diagonally across the map to rescue some settler's kitten from a tree, and (2) being the guy who personally shot the settlers and the kitten to make it a raider outpost. Maybe, you know, a "shut up, Preston, I ain't letting it down. It was a pain catching it to put it in the tree in the first place." :wink:

[Gruffydd]

 

...

 

Besides, even if, as you say in message #30 I agreed to protect the settlements (never mind that actually I was asked to provide leadership for a organization), there are more ways to RP that. Maybe I lied. Maybe I just thought I'd get some power or resources to misuse for other purposes. Maybe I just thought I could send them to search for Shaun. Maybe I'm totally unfit for the job. Maybe I want to play more of a General Melchett from Blackadder:

 

General Melchett: Are you looking forward to the big push?

Private Baldrick: No sir, I'm absolutely terrified.

General Melchett: Ah, the healthy humor of the honest tommy. Don't worry my boy, if you should falter, remember that Captain Darling and I are behind you.

Captain Blackadder: About thirty-five miles behind you.

Actually being competent and selfless and brave is by far not the only way to RP a general :tongue:

 

What one COULD say is just that agreeing to do the job and then ignoring it isn't particularly nice or honourable or stuff like that. But, hey, I can live with playing scum :tongue:

 

That was also something I mentioned in my original post. At no point are you required to complete those quests, and if you don't, the penalty is not that high, especially if you don't particularly care about settlement building or settlers.

[Moraelin]

It's not that simple, sadly. Nevermind that it's still HINDSIGHT. You realize, I hope, that Preston's giving quests out of nowhere, can actually prevent you from getting settlements you do want. Just because he filled your log with crap without asking.

 

And it's actually a problem in more than one way:

 

 

1. you can only have so many Minutemen quests active at the same time. I think it's 3 without mods. So it can happen, and it did happen, that I can't get a quest for either County Crossing or the nursery, which I wanted for the lots of mutfruit trees and nice supply line connections mostly, because what they have is a minuteman quest and the idiot Preston had already given me 3 just because I went to Sanctuary to upgrade my weapons.

 

So yeah, I'm totally not forced to do his idiotic crap... unless I want to be able to get another settlement ever again.

 

 

2. there are only a handful of different quests for each faction, and you can only have each of them ONCE. There isn't a different quest for killing the ghouls for County Crossing, and killing the ghouls for the nursery, and killing the ghouls for Oberland, etc. There is just one quest, and it gets some variables set in, like who you're doing it for and which location is it you're supposed to clean.

 

And again, you can only have it once. If you already have a kill-the-ghouls quest from Preston for Oberland, you may well be unable to take the quest for County Crossing, because it's also a kill-the-ghouls quest.

 

So, yeah, again, I totally could ignore Preston's crap... if I also give up on the settlements I actually want.

 

 

3. Some of those quests STILL don't count as finished until you actually go talk to Preston, and for the first almost a year after release ALL of them didn't count as finished until I went and talked to Preston. At which point he had about a 50-50 chance to just give me another one.

 

So, yay, I went and did a quest I didn't want, just to be able to get one from the settlement I do want... except, oops, Preston just brought me back to square one. I'm STILL at the 3 MM quest limit, and I STILL can't go get a quest from County Crossing.

 

 

The only way to figure out ahead and not get into that situation is, again, clairvoyance. Which you still can't use as some saving grace. I shouldn't have to know in advance that something like that would happen. What's wrong with just giving Preston's dialogue a "no" option instead?

[Gruffydd]

I didn't have that experience with the radiant quests blocking settlement quests at all. Not once.

Not sure why you were having so much trouble with it.

[Moraelin]

Well, the only symptom is that you can talk to all settlers, and none of them have a quest for you. It's definitely real. The question is more like if you made the connection of why they don't have a quest.

 

Edit: well, I suppose the question also is if you tried to do the quests only for very specific settlements.

[ibldedibble]

Personally I never had an issue with Preston. He's one of my favourite characters in the game, though I do make fun of him quite a bit. When you use him as a companion though, his story is actually pretty interesting (at least to me).

 

But I can see why people are annoyed by the constant "Here, have another quest."-part. (That's why I've set max Minutemen quests to 1 at the moment. And since I get most of my quests from settlers at new settlements, Preston never gives me a new quest. :) )

[CiderMuffin]

Personally I just dislike that he was a radiant quest giver and a companion, those two things should not mix. Otherwise I find he is alright once you get to know more about him and I like his optimism/willpower to push forward in light of everything that has happened.