IMO - FO4 -vs- FO3 & NV

[jjb54]

I think the games have progressively gotten better. Fallout 4 is the most engaging of the three for me. I do the settlements, but I like to use mods that make the process less tedious. Not sure why Bethesda tacked it on to Fallout 4, but I do know a lot of people liked the rebuilding mods in Skyrim. However, they were more quest-oriented and less like Rollercoaster Tycoon.

 

Wish some mod maker had taken me up on my request to have the Manny, Moe and Jack team of building contractors mod, build your settlements in exchange for completing some radiant quest. Then perhaps have the fabulous and flamboyant interior decorating duo of the Mick & Ralph mod give the residences wonderful window treatments and other flourishes in exchange for more radiant quests.

 

The building in Skyrim is the mod - Hearthfire and you are building your home. It's seriously a very big difference from FO4, a very big difference.

 

The problem with FO4 and building mods, you cannot get " too creative " or your games start to deal with Culling and other issues that even the mods that were suppose to " fix " these ... well .... sorta helps but not completely.

 

The game simply was not designed to be Sim-City.

 

I think Beth either:

 

Hurried, lost their creative edge, or something on FO 4. All one has to do is go back, like I did, to 3 or NV and see that the characters, even minor ones, have more ' substance ' then even the main ones in 4, with the exception of Nick V. MacCready, Mama Murphy and some of the NPC's in Far Harbor.

 

Sadly there was a wealth of material there for Character Quests:

 

Deacon - would have made some great side quests ' cleaning up his past '. The Deathclaw Gang hold outs that were still ' going at it '.

 

Piper - What happened to her parents? Maybe we find that family was attacked by Synths?

 

Strong - As much as I hate the seriously limited lines and how annoying he is. Could we have a Quest to find him the " The Milk of Human Kindness ", like more books that would help him understand Human Kindness?

 

Nick V. - if we can put Curry into a human body ... why not a Quest to get Nick into a real body and such and a Quest to find the ' right person ' .....?

 

But instead - we got a game that the more mods than not, help take the " grind " out of FO4 ...... I even looked at the Mod lists in FO3 and NV and found very few mods that deal with " grind ".

 

Then we have the Sandbox. Seriously limited and the FO4 sandbox is basically equal to 1 maybe 2 areas that would easily fit into the FO3 and NV sandboxes.

 

What did ' get better ' were basically the CGI effect and visual and as one poster, the weapon action. But the plot of 4, and the Sandbox basically ... were scaled down. So you got less of a game plot and areas to explore ... but ya, better graphics and ' weapon action '. I dunno, I would rather have had, more Sandbox to explore and more Plot to explore.

 

But that's just me and I understand that .....

[dikr]

Personally I love FO4's world, the art, the size, the atmosphere and yeah, settlement building. For all annoyances you might have with settlers; there are mods to address them.

 

What I hate most is the writing and that's hard to change, since it influences the core of the game.

 

Something I already noticed in Skyrim: Cliche-ridden, uninspired and bland.

 

FO:NV's writing was awesome. They should hire those folks. Really.

 

And I sincerely hope they will stop giving me that 'savior of the world' role that I don't want to have. I never ever finish main story lines because of that, despite 1000's of hours of enjoyment of Bethesda's games.

[Gruffydd]

Ah. You're not actually interested in discussing the games, just the small bits you're obsessed with. Got it, 'nuf said. Moving on.

[jjb54]

Ah. You're not actually interested in discussing the games, just the small bits you're obsessed with. Got it, 'nuf said. Moving on.

 

Oh, but I am - admittedly I hear the generic lines:

 

.. " I like the weapons "

.. " I like the graphics "

 

But ... the game is not purely Graphics and Weapons.

 

Case In Point: ( As I pointed out in my OP. )

 

* The Sandbox is indeed smaller and seriously more limited then FO 3 & FO NV.

 

* Thus: Seriously limited Quests and Places to Explore.

 

* With the exception of a handful of NPC's ... the majority are emo-wimps ( I play in Survival - Hardest Mode ).

 

* The settlements are buggy to seriously buggy and there too, to quote other posts I've read:

... They need their nose wiped and diapers changed & Babysat on a regular basis. < - Not my words but posts that I read

 

Am I missing something? If so, let me know, please.

 

Because the game should consists more then Graphics and Weapons. At least IMHO.

 

Feel free, please to challenge my points. :smile:

[kevkiev]

I enjoy playing FO4 well enough, I think mainly because of the technical aspects that have been mentioned, but it doesn't draw me in nearly as much as did F03, FONV or Skyrim. Not even close, really. Also agree with the previous comment that Bethesda should farm out the writing to Obsidian - I loved the writing in FONV. I know a lot of people found Dead Money kinda aggravating but, for me anyways, that DLC was the peak of writing for any of the 4 games. I found the story and characters to be genuinely haunting, and was drawn-in like in no other part of any of those games. The storylines and characters in FO4 are just enough to hold the game together. When Todd Howard was describing FO4 at E3, especially the stuff about building and playable pipboy games (I think I actually cringed when I heard about pipboy games), I kinda saw all that coming. So it's not like I had any expectations dashed. Unfortunately, I think things are only going to get worse in future Bethesda games. I appreciate the comments that Skyrim was kinda cliched (overall, though, I think it kicks FO4's butt in the story/character dept.), but I'd wager TESVI will make Skyrim look like freakin' Hemingway.

[jjb54]

I enjoy playing FO4 well enough, I think mainly because of the technical aspects that have been mentioned, but it doesn't draw me in nearly as much as did F03, FONV or Skyrim. Not even close, really. Also agree with the previous comment that Bethesda should farm out the writing to Obsidian - I loved the writing in FONV. I know a lot of people found Dead Money kinda aggravating but, for me anyways, that DLC was the peak of writing for any of the 4 games. I found the story and characters to be genuinely haunting, and was drawn-in like in no other part of any of those games. The storylines and characters in FO4 are just enough to hold the game together. Just.

 

The " technical " is good. I won't deny that. The CGI and such are better. The weapons are indeed a lot better .... but except for a few NPC ( Vanilla ), for which I can count on 1 hand are good.

 

IE: Deacon - Nicky V. - Piper - the Singer in The Third Rail - MacCreedy and maybe 1 or 2 more.

 

I tried FO 4 and will try again, to play it. But it just didn't " hold " me or " keep me ".

 

As I posted earlier, I would have like to have seen NO Sim-City and more:

 

... Story Quest Related to Deacon.

.......... The Deathclaw Gang, remains and hunt them down.

 

... Story Quest related to Storm, even though I did put Storm and Curie in the same Settlement in hopes that they would kill each other. ( They didn't, and the Settlers were NO help either.

........ But with Storm, there could have been a Quest for " Lost Books ", that helped Strong learn about " Human Kindness " and have a slight development to grow.

 

... Nicky V. ( We saw that they could transfer Curie into a human body ), so I would have liked to have seen a Quest to help Nick become more human as well.

 

... Piper, what happened to her parents, that she has to take care of her little sister? A good plot that maybe had a Quest and a Happy - or - Semi Happy Ending.

 

There are, well some great potential that would have made the game so much more involved. :)

 

I'm playing FO 3 right now and am enjoying it. Like finding an Old Friend.

[Gruffydd]

 

Ah. You're not actually interested in discussing the games, just the small bits you're obsessed with. Got it, 'nuf said. Moving on.

 

Oh, but I am - admittedly I hear the generic lines:

 

.. " I like the weapons "

.. " I like the graphics "

 

But ... the game is not purely Graphics and Weapons.

 

Case In Point: ( As I pointed out in my OP. )

 

* The Sandbox is indeed smaller and seriously more limited then FO 3 & FO NV.

 

* Thus: Seriously limited Quests and Places to Explore.

 

* With the exception of a handful of NPC's ... the majority are emo-wimps ( I play in Survival - Hardest Mode ).

 

* The settlements are buggy to seriously buggy and there too, to quote other posts I've read:

... They need their nose wiped and diapers changed & Babysat on a regular basis. < - Not my words but posts that I read

 

Am I missing something? If so, let me know, please.

 

Because the game should consists more then Graphics and Weapons. At least IMHO.

 

Feel free, please to challenge my points. :smile:

 

 

You didn't actually address what I wrote before, but sure, I'll try again.

By the way, I never mentioned graphics or weapons.

 

First off, no, the sandbox isn't smaller.

Fallout 3 was 8.462 square kilometers, NV was 8.502, and 4 was 9.743.

The person who did the estimates noted that the numbers for FO4 were on the conservative side, because it covers the world map (sandbox) area, and Diamond City is bigger on the inside than the outside.

 

Places to explore? I found a lot more to see and do in FO4 than in 3 or NV. Much as I love 3 and NV, there's a lot of open space with not much to do in it. In 4, even in the "dead areas" between major encounters, you can find little stuff - hidden bunkers, buried loot, wandering NPCs, random quests (sometimes really random - boy in fridge, for instance), those locations you can only find by triangulating on radio signals, etc....

That said, a lot of what I found in 4 wasn't connected to a quest, so if you're looking for some questgiver to hit you over the head with stuff to do, yeah, you'll be disappointed. There are some really cool areas out there that never once have a quest involved, and there's a lot of lore and background story to find by looking at the environment, a few notes people left behind, and other such clues, and seeing what actually happened to people.

 

NPCs: Utterly subjective, so no point discussing. I found a lot of NPCs whose stories I thought were very interesting. Sure, they're not uberhardcore warriors, but then not everyone needs to be. As I said in the prior post, to each their own.

 

Settlements: If you do them right, no, they aren't any more buggy than the rest of the game, and you don't need to do a bunch of handholding and nose wiping. Don't like putting together your own buildings? No problem, just drop in some basic prefab buildings. Put a bed per settler inside the buildings. If there aren't crops or water there already, drop those in. Add some shops, and assign settlers, assign the rest to the crops. Add a few turrets for defense. Done. Happiness remains stable, and you can drop by every now and then to grab your generated caps, excess food, and purified water from the workbench. Just remember to turn off the beacon when your settlement is the size you want it. I've got a settlement in Far Harbor that has 1 person in it with no beacon, perfectly stable and happy, and another with 3. You are not required to develop them any more than you want to. If they're not your thing, you can mostly ignore them without affecting your game play.

 

Regarding one of your other posts:

No, Hearthfire is not equivalent to settlement building. Hearthfire is for player homes. The settlement equivalent in other games is the Real Time Settler mod, available for both Fallout 3 and Fallout NV. FO4 settlement building is basically that mod.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/7070

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/36922/

What was Bethesda thinking? They were thinking "225,000 unique downloads. This is really popular, and a cool idea. Let's make it part of the game."

 

But as I have said before, to each their own. For example, I hate survival mode. For me, there's a lot of unnecessary grind to it that detracts from the fun of exploring and playing the game.

 

In prior games, I loved the rep system, hated the karma system. Any alignment system is arbitrary, and their excessively so. If it was okay for me to slaughter every person at a location, with no negative karma, why is taking a now-unowned item from that location theft, and bad karma? How was getting the ghouls into the Tower good karma, considering what happens if you succeed? Bleah. Just let me roleplay without trying to overlay morality mechanics. I would have loved to see rep used more in FO4, but was really glad when they dumped karma.

 

I've liked most story add-ons/DLCs that I've played, especially liking Broken Steel, Point Lookout, Old World Blues, and Far Harbor. I liked Dead Money's story, but mechanics were too different (felt like a whole different game), and I was glad when I finished. I hated Lonesome Road (it killed the game for me - boring, boring, boring, and don't tell me after I've played the whole game what my character's backstory "really" is in an open world RPG). I was seriously disappointed by NukaWorld - loved the setting, hated that 99% of it was geared toward being a raider, and almost nothing toward destroying the power of the raiders and restoring order and civilization. Okay, you killed every raider, and the merchants are back in charge. Great! And the story now is... nothing? Bleah.

 

I hated weapon durability. Added an unnecessary grind in the name of "realism". Glad it's gone.

 

I hated the repetitive nature of the interconnected downtown areas in 3. Not enough variety in the structures to make it interesting, and not enough story to be found. Mostly just a bunch of interconnected generic pockets linked by cookie cutter subway tunnels. Yawn.

 

I liked the major centers in the prior games, like Rivet City, Megaton, Underworld... but too many generic NPCs with no purpose other than mobile scenery (note: same problem applies to FO4). I wasn't thrilled with New Vegas (the city) itself, as I expected more from it. It just felt... tiny.

For 4, I enjoyed Diamond City. There were a lot of little stories to be found, and a fair number of quests. I âreallyâ liked Goodneighbor, and wish they'd done more with it. The depth of real world lore embedded in Goodneighbor really gave the place life. Bunker Hill felt generic to me. I like the airport/Prydwen. I enjoyed parts of the Institute, and found other parts generic and repetetive. I really liked the town in Far Harbor.

On a side note, I would have loved to see some people from Rivet City show up in the Commonwealth trying to get someone to take down the BoS for them. Given that the BoS "scavenged" their reactor for the Prydwen....

 

However, it's lesser locations in FO4 that I had the most fun exploring. Hallucigen. The Yangtze. Treasures of Jamaica Plain. Suffolk Charter School. That weird parking garage gauntlet. Vault 75. Crater of Atom. Federal Surveillance Center K-21B. And so on. Interesting locations, hidden lore, fun battles, odd puzzles. There's a lot to find, explore, and do, if you're not limiting yourself to only what you get from questgivers, and really explore.

[CasperTheLich]

i've noticed with most game studios that over time most IPs seem to miss the details that give their titles that signature feel. in some cases it's just an overall drop in quality, in others it's simply the fact that dev teams tend to go through a metamorphosis over time, and often times the team that made the first title in a series isn't the same team that builds the next one, as key people move on, project leads get replaced, etc...

 

now, with fallout 4...

there are a few things that bug me in regards to FO4.

 

first, the settlement system does bug me, a lot. however, it's the fact that it doesn't work all that well. if it could manage to accurately track the amount of beds, crops, water, settlers, as well as keeping track of what beds are covered and protected from the elements... if my settlements didn't randomly start dropping their happiness rating for no reason. if there was a way to uncover & track synth infiltrators, & or figure some way to deal with them besides waiting for an institute raid, and killing them when they betray the settlement during the firefight. if it wasn't for all that bs, i think i'd actually like the settlement building aspect of FO4, but as it stands it's more annoying than fun.

 

second, the fact that several walls, structures, etc. have open spaces between planks of wood, metal, windows, & whatnot... that shouldn't count as solid objects, but do. it pisses me off when i waste a few rounds of .50 BMG firing through an opening that isn't actually truly there. you can't do that bs in a shooter.

 

third, if you're making a game involving primarily, well firearms... you should probably do a bit of research, if you're not all that familiar with that subject. the iron sights on most weapons are off, and by a noticeable amount. the sights on most sniper scopes also suffer this problem, several firearms are left handed, and you're firing them right handed, which is an issue, unless you like shell-casings being spit into you're face, which i've seen happen many a time to my characters in my game, lucky that doesn't burn or blind them.

 

there are other issues too, but for me those are the biggest ones. now, you might be surprised... however, i still love fallout 4, even with all it's flaws.

 

---edit typo

Edited February 1, 2018 by Invisible Man

[Gruffydd]

...

If there was a way to uncover & track synth infiltrators, & or figure some way to deal with them besides waiting for an institute raid, and killing them when they betray the settlement during the firefight.

...

 

The synths don't sleep much and have 10 energy defense in VATS.

[Gruffydd]

Duplicate post. Ignore.