Fallout 4 critic vs audience reviews for pc port.

[kenu12345]

Don't even try to stand up to a Deathclaw without your Power Armor.

That's actually a point of annoyance for me. Power Armor, historically, hasn't helped against deathclaws at all. Their claws are supposed to totally ignore armor, and open that suit like a can. The only Deathclaw strategy I trust is "jump on top of a rock where they can't reach you".

I always relied on taking their legs out at a distance strategy .3. That or take a bunch of turbo and rush in to annihilate them

 

[Something Amyss]

They are. As long as their opinions coincide with mine. If they don't, they are wrong.

And objectively so! Just like Mad Max not deserving a 5/10, because that opinion was objectively wrong!

 

[DarklordKyo]

I really don't get the hate for this game... I've been having a blast. The perils of the hype train I guess.

I'm sorry if I'm echoing what's already said on this thread, but, from what I heard, there were some rather disappointing aspects about it. Apparently, the dialogue system is very simplified, that it's apparently buggy as crap even by Bethesda standards, and some other things that I heard are apparently the case. All that said, this is all secondhand info, I haven't played it myself.

 

[Denamic]

I really don't get the hate for this game... I've been having a blast. The perils of the hype train I guess.

Just like it is with most other things, it's cool to go 'against the mainstream' and hate on popular things. The bigger they are, the cooler you are for being a cynical blowbag regarding it. That's why Fallout 4 is pretty much the worst game ever made. They've seen the leaks so they're pretty much experts and are super cool because they're internet hipsters.

 

[CaitSeith]

I really don't get the hate for this game... I've been having a blast. The perils of the hype train I guess.

Some of us were shouting loudly and proudly not to listen to hype. "Remember New Vegas and your disappointment!" we said.
We were called pessimistic and that we just don't like video games.
Well at least we knew this train crash was coming, eh?

Disappointment? The hell are you talking about? New Vegas was awesome.

New Vegas was astonishingly buggy on release, and remains far buggier than any modern Bethesda game. Whether New Vegas is a great game is a whole other matter, though.

11 month dev time, shortened from 18 months 8 months into the project. Bethesda was responsible for QA. They did not perform any QA on the product, instead releasing it immediately. Obsidian was contracted for a rather large bonus if it made an 80 on metacritic. Oddly enough, every time it stared to pass that number, enough negative reviews came out to keep it from doing so. It's score by the end of the agreed upon time period was 79.

Wait... conditioning bonuses to Metacritic scores? Well, I no longer wonder why we can't have nice things...

 

[Benpasko]

They've seen the leaks so they're pretty much experts and are super cool because they're internet hipsters.

You do know the game is out? People have played it, even a lot of it! I'd say, based on my experience so far, it's the worst modern Fallout game. It's definitely solid, but I'm not in love like I was at FO3 and NV's launches. The biggest problem, for me, is the dialogue system. I really strongly dislike the main character, and I can't just apply my own characterization like in a non-voiced game.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Wait... conditioning bonuses to Metacritic scores? Well, I no longer wonder why we can't have nice things...

To my knowledge, it only happened the one time that we're aware of.

We also shouldn't pretend an Obsidian product wouldn't have been buggy regardless of how long they had to develop it or who was providing QC. Their track record in that department is consistent regardless of who their producer is.

 

[lacktheknack]

You want to see Bethesda and Warner burn because of this?

Really, this only reinforces how I want to see gamers on the internet burn. Possibly with actual fire.

 

[Raddra]

Is anyone even surprised that No Mutants Allowed and similar places decided to metabomb Fallout 4?

Without any research I knew it was these people. They were the same people who fractured the community after F:NV was released and irrationally attacked anyone who so much as said they liked the colour of a gun in Fallout 3.

They're irrational, toxic and hateful people. The reason that devs don't listen to fans any more.

 

[Fu11Frontal]

Honestly, my biggest complaint about this game is the soundtrack. Now, I love hackin' and whackin' and smackin'. I do. But I've been hackin' and whackin' in smackin' for 200+ hours ever since Fallout 3 came out. Now, I understand that there's only so much innuendo-laden, safe pop music from the swing era...so why must we be slaves to it?

Examining the other tracks on the playlist for Diamond City Radio, the new tracks lay on the atomic age paranoia theme. Now, thematically I understand why I'm not going to get Kyuss or The Velvet Underground or something. And, it's not as though these tracks don't deserve to be in the game, but what I confess I was really hoping for were more radio stations with distinctive sounds. Fallout 4 uses the radio as a means of conveying exposition for quests in vicinity of the player, and additionally has some factional radios that play instrumental tunes. The most prominent of these alternative stations is the classical radio managed by...someone. I listened to this station for about an hour and soon grew weary of listening to a continually rising string section as I stalked through the wilderness with nothing but my nightclothes and a rusty machete.

I admit, this is probably a case of me having an overly specific taste in music. I wouldn't expect them to make something to match everyone's tastes, after all, the flavor behind the music in the game is that it's what survived the war (how did Travis get all those ink spots songs though? Are there a lot of copies of these or did 3Dog mail them to him?), but come on, odds are more unique music would have survived than just stuff with a specific subset of a genre. I'm sure as the game opens up to modders we'll eventually get a radio station capable of playing tunes from our hard drives, but it would have been nice to hear something else. Elvis? Chuck Berry? The Beatles?

God they would have to pay so much for that, nvm I understand now.

 

[Zipa]

You've got people who turn God Rays to maximum, and then complain they can't hold 60fps.
You've got people who uncap the framerate, something you should NEVER do with this type of game, and then complain when bugs start popping up all over the place.
You've got people who have no sense of perspective. If a game crashes, it's totally the game's fault and not their OS, drivers, configuration, etc. They're like those people who blame Project64 for causing BSODs when it's actually Microsoft's fault for writing a buggy kernel.

Uncapping a games frame rate is a perfectly acceptable and normal thing for a PC game to be able to do. Not being able to is a sign of a rushed and/or shoddy port and has nothing to do with the type of game. This is not the first Bethesda game to run afoul of such a problem, Skyrim has a similar issue with its physics engine going haywire if you tried to play it at anything greater than 60fps. By comparison the GTAV port was very well done and has no problems with an uncapped frame rate.

If we weren't supposed to be doing this then technologies like Gsync and Freesync wouldn't of been created by Nvidia and AMD respectively.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Don't even try to stand up to a Deathclaw without your Power Armor.

That's actually a point of annoyance for me. Power Armor, historically, hasn't helped against deathclaws at all. Their claws are supposed to totally ignore armor, and open that suit like a can. The only Deathclaw strategy I trust is "jump on top of a rock where they can't reach you".

I always relied on taking their legs out at a distance strategy .3. That or take a bunch of turbo and rush in to annihilate them

I always relied on the "shoot them with the dart gun and watch them hilariously limp towards you" strategy. It's super effective against anything nasty that you'd rather not be up in your shit.

 

[TristanBelmont]

Honestly, I don't plan on buying it because I know nothing is gonna compare to New Vegas. It's just too good.

The dialogue, from everything I've heard, is dreadful.

The base building mechanic is alright but the whole point of this series is to explore the Wasteland.

And, call this unfair but whatever, The Witcher 3 came out earlier this year, and is THE single-player MMO. It's THE action RPG. It's just....too good...

 

[kenu12345]

Don't even try to stand up to a Deathclaw without your Power Armor.

That's actually a point of annoyance for me. Power Armor, historically, hasn't helped against deathclaws at all. Their claws are supposed to totally ignore armor, and open that suit like a can. The only Deathclaw strategy I trust is "jump on top of a rock where they can't reach you".

I always relied on taking their legs out at a distance strategy .3. That or take a bunch of turbo and rush in to annihilate them

I always relied on the "shoot them with the dart gun and watch them hilariously limp towards you" strategy. It's super effective against anything nasty that you'd rather not be up in your shit.

Yeah, too bad that thing wasn't in New Vegas as far as I can tell. I have no idea why they removed make able weapons on that game

 

[Josh123914]

Really, this only reinforces how I want to see gamers on the internet burn. Possibly with actual fire.

Y'know what? I don't want to know...

Seriously, what in the hell?

 

[Redvenge]

Using the FO:NV model, it would take you until level 18 to be able to pick/hack everything, assuming a Luck score of 5. Under Fallout 4 rules, you would have all the necessary perk points to pick/hack everything by level 12. Adding in the level requirements picking/hacking everything would be at 21 with 9 perks to burn.

... what?

With a 1 in Perception, a 1 in Intelligence, and 5 in Luck you could easily be able to open Very Hard (100 Skill) Locks and hack Very Hard (100 Skill) terminals by level 14. Skill books, skill magazines, chems and equipment can be used to boost your SPECIAL/Skills. You can't do that with the perk chart.

Fallout4, you cannot open a Master lock before level 18. Same for Hacking. Even if you meet the requirements at an early level.

Btw...
...is false. You need the perks to craft the mods, not to use them, nor are they level dependent. By level 14 I had a 10mm and a shotgun both nearly maxed on top tier mods I found on other weapons, but I don't have any of the modding perks. You have reminded me that I completely neglected my armor, though. I'm horrified by the thought of how many good armor mods I inexplicably sold.

Whoops. Those perks seem much nicer now. I'll have to invest in them. Thank you for the correction.

They are still perk bloat though.

The level gating is probably here to prevent players from getting to 100 in their guns skill before they hit level 20 and turning combat into an utter formality. I haven't personally gotten to level 34, so I can't speak on whether or not the combat becomes trivial, but by that logic, combat would have only become trivial faster in the previous games.

Level gating in a single player game, in an open world sandbox, is lazy game design. There is no excuse for it.

I don't know how you figure that the old system gave you more options per level. You COULD technically spread your skill points out however you wanted to, but in order to make any significant headway, you had to increase a skill by more than 2 or 3 points. Sure, you CAN increase your Small Guns skill by 1 point, but it will have almost no effect on your character.

You can increase your Guns skill and get a Perk to raise your Agility by 1 in the old system. Now, you can do one or the other. The old system also had skill books for permanent increases to Skills and skill magazines, chems and outfits for temporary increases to Skills. This adds flexibility because you could do small increases to several skills and use temporary increases to even things out.

Regarding Perk bloat. Most of the "Filler" perks you mentioned are carry overs from previous games, with the exception of the automatic weapons perk. Fallout 3 had just as many phoned in Perks, that did nothing more than reinforce what the skills were already doing. So either they were useless because the Skills gave you all you needed, or they were necessary for an optimal character build, which essentially meant that you had to repurpose your Perk points as skill points if you wanted avoid handicapping your character.

The perks I mentioned were never in any other Fallout game. I'm glad they finally got rid of Here and Now (that turd has been here since FO1). There were no "mind control" perks, no mod perks, no "automatic weapons" perks. Bethesda needed 70 perks to fill out a chart. They did the exact opposite of streamlining in order to fill it out.

 

[LetalisK]

Using the FO:NV model, it would take you until level 18 to be able to pick/hack everything, assuming a Luck score of 5. Under Fallout 4 rules, you would have all the necessary perk points to pick/hack everything by level 12. Adding in the level requirements picking/hacking everything would be at 21 with 9 perks to burn.

... what?

With a 1 in Perception, a 1 in Intelligence, and 5 in Luck you could easily be able to open Very Hard (100 Skill) Locks and hack Very Hard (100 Skill) terminals by level 14. Skill books, skill magazines, chems and equipment can be used to boost your SPECIAL/Skills. You can't do that with the perk chart.

Spoiler

Fallout4, you cannot open a Master lock before level 18. Same for Hacking. Even if you meet the requirements at an early level.

Btw...
...is false. You need the perks to craft the mods, not to use them, nor are they level dependent. By level 14 I had a 10mm and a shotgun both nearly maxed on top tier mods I found on other weapons, but I don't have any of the modding perks. You have reminded me that I completely neglected my armor, though. I'm horrified by the thought of how many good armor mods I inexplicably sold.

Whoops. Those perks seem much nicer now. I'll have to invest in them. Thank you for the correction.

They are still perk bloat though.

The level gating is probably here to prevent players from getting to 100 in their guns skill before they hit level 20 and turning combat into an utter formality. I haven't personally gotten to level 34, so I can't speak on whether or not the combat becomes trivial, but by that logic, combat would have only become trivial faster in the previous games.

Level gating in a single player game, in an open world sandbox, is lazy game design. There is no excuse for it.

I don't know how you figure that the old system gave you more options per level. You COULD technically spread your skill points out however you wanted to, but in order to make any significant headway, you had to increase a skill by more than 2 or 3 points. Sure, you CAN increase your Small Guns skill by 1 point, but it will have almost no effect on your character.

You can increase your Guns skill and get a Perk to raise your Agility by 1 in the old system. Now, you can do one or the other. The old system also had skill books for permanent increases to Skills and skill magazines, chems and outfits for temporary increases to Skills. This adds flexibility because you could do small increases to several skills and use temporary increases to even things out.

Regarding Perk bloat. Most of the "Filler" perks you mentioned are carry overs from previous games, with the exception of the automatic weapons perk. Fallout 3 had just as many phoned in Perks, that did nothing more than reinforce what the skills were already doing. So either they were useless because the Skills gave you all you needed, or they were necessary for an optimal character build, which essentially meant that you had to repurpose your Perk points as skill points if you wanted avoid handicapping your character.

The perks I mentioned were never in any other Fallout game. I'm glad they finally got rid of Here and Now (that turd has been here since FO1). There were no "mind control" perks, no mod perks, no "automatic weapons" perks. Bethesda needed 70 perks to fill out a chart. They did the exact opposite of streamlining in order to fill it out.

It seems to me from this and your response to the other guy is that your primary beef isn't so much with the perks system, but rather that they removed the permanent and temporary boosts to abilities. (I do know they have permanent boosts via magazines, but I haven't seen enough of them to say whether they are mostly straight up boosts or flavoring. I know the Grognaks are are straight up melee boosts.)

 

[Redvenge]

Honestly, I don't plan on buying it because I know nothing is gonna compare to New Vegas. It's just too good...

...The base building mechanic is alright but the whole point of this series is to explore the Wasteland...

The Wasteland Settler mod for FO:NV will let you build your own settlement in the Mojave.

I'm guessing Bethesda saw the million plus downloads of it for FO3 and FO:NV and decided that sort of gameplay might be well received. Seems they were right.

 

[Redvenge]

It seems to me from this and your response to the other guy is that your primary beef isn't so much with the perks system, but rather that they removed the permanent and temporary boosts to abilities. (I do know they have permanent boosts via magazines, but I haven't seen enough of them to say whether they are mostly straight up boosts or flavoring. I know the Grognaks are are straight up melee boosts.)

I like a lot of content in the perk system. There is good stuff there. HOW they set up the system, ie the perk array, is poorly done.

If there was a way to give temporary "perks", then that would mitigate some of the problems. But why try so hard to copy the function and flexibility of a system you are moving away from? Just use the old system. It's innovation for innovation's sake, not to improve gameplay.

 

[F-I-D-O]

Wait... conditioning bonuses to Metacritic scores? Well, I no longer wonder why we can't have nice things...

To my knowledge, it only happened the one time that we're aware of.

We also shouldn't pretend an Obsidian product wouldn't have been buggy regardless of how long they had to develop it or who was providing QC. Their track record in that department is consistent regardless of who their producer is.

Metacritic based bonuses seem to be fairly common. Most contracts that get leaked out have those clauses, as a way to ensure publishers some protection against productions like Rogue Warrior. The idea is that the better a developer's game, the more money they make, so the more they try. A reasonable expectation.

The reason we hear so much about F:NV was that if you average the review scores (they only had to get an 80 in professional scores), it was more than 80 at the end of the time. Metacrtic uses a weighted algorithm that they have yet to disclose, leading some scores more worth than others. Missing it by 1 point when the on paper math says you've met it causes a bit of frustration. The clause leaked out, and it became common knowledge.
Kingdom's of Amalur: Reckoning had a similar clause shown in the contract that's come up from the ensuing legal battle around that studio, EA, and Rhode Island. Again, it's become a pretty common practice to try and ensure better games. F:NV was a special case because it was SO close (and contract's don't have much wiggle room) and loved by fans. It felt like Obsidian had gotten screwed on QA and rushed builds, considering most of the reviews praised the game's nature, gameplay, and story, but knocked points for the buggy nature. Now Obsidian's going to be buggy, but later patches cleaned up the game. But Metacritic review scores will not update for any reason, and will only add in new reviews.