Fallout 4 critic vs audience reviews for pc port.

[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.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

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.

Uncapping framerates was causing problems way back in the days of games based on Quake III. Star Trek: Elite Force II's gravity physics break if you turn off vsync, for example. It has nothing to do with "shoddy porting". Fallout 4 and Skyrim were not designed to run faster than 60fps. They could have been PC exclusives, and that wouldn't have changed.

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.

Game developers aren't obligated to support such technologies. Just like they're not obligated to support SLI with their engines.

 

[FireAza]

It's the internet, everyone thinks in extremes only. If something is flawed it's TEH WORST THING EVER ZOMG THIS IZ WORSE THEN ZOMBIE HILTER!!!11. People will then predictably go to Amazon/Metacritic and give it the lowest possible rating as some form of "revenge" on the publisher. It's how it's always been and always will be.

 

[Syzygy23]

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

For me its the fact that it forces a backstory on you for no apparent reason besides a bad story and removes alot of the rpg elements that I like about past games especially New Vegas

FO4 has at worst, a decent story. I dunno where people are getting the opinion that the story is "bad", I just finished withthe institute ending and found no plot holes, glaring or otherwise. If anything, FO4 is a massive improvement in storytelling from the prior Bethesda FO games, especially 3 where it was somehow ignored completely that you can remove radiation from water by filtering it through regular dirt.

 

[Lightknight]

All that really matters, all anyone really cares about, is how much revenue the game generated. Bethesda has already shipped 12 million physical copies alone. That's not even touching on Steam sales which we know was also breaking records there too.

My guess is that the people complaining the hardest just aren't seeing the forest for the trees. The game is spectacular. I'm loving it.

 

[Syzygy23]

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

For me its the fact that it forces a backstory on you for no apparent reason besides a bad story and removes alot of the rpg elements that I like about past games especially New Vegas

FO4 has at worst, a decent story. I dunno where people are getting the opinion that the story is "bad", I just finished withthe institute ending and found no plot holes, glaring or otherwise. If anything, FO4 is a massive improvement in storytelling from the prior Bethesda FO games, especially 3 where it was somehow ignored completely that you can remove radiation from water by filtering it through regular dirt.

It takes a lot more than just having no plot holes for a story to be good.

And that's when you land purely in the realm of subjectivity, thus making it a moot point. If there are no mechanical/technical errors that would objectively lower the quality of the work, all you have left is the fluffy bits. It's like complaining about the coat of paint on a car.

 

[elvor0]

The game is a bad Fallout game that retroactively changes multiple points of lore for no reason SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER


The original Pip Boy was a tablet like device. Because Beth came up with the fucking idiotic ergonomically armband idea, they had to retroactively change the armband to be the original incarnation of the Pip Boy in the intro.



[\SPOILER] and has stripped the consequences of your actions from what you do. Not to mention the macguffin that you start the game running after.

Actually; Wrist Mounted Pipboy predates Bethesda

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Lil%27_Pip_3000

 

[hermes]

Given that this is the escapist, this is in order:

Fans are clingy, complaining dipshits who will never, ever be grateful for any concession you make. The moment you shut out their shrill, tremulous voices, the happier you'll be for it.

And in all seriousness, you are wasting your time listening to user reviews (specially in metacritic). For all the crap critics get about bias and bribes, they are Pulitzer winners compared to 90 % of the users reviews, which I think didn't even play the game or are illiterate at best.

 

[sXeth]

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.)

Some of the magazines do interesting things that should've been Perks (Get more meat from Animals is one, for instance). Others just gap in where skill points used to work (Makes lockpick sweet spot wider).

The perks that hard lock things are annoying, because there's no way (via skill or boosts from items (equipped or buffs) to get around the hard locks. You just straight up can't go into a Master-gated zone without investing five levels into it.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

All that really matters, all anyone really cares about, is how much revenue the game generated.

If that's the case then World of Warcraft is the best game in history, followed by Wii Sports, and I'm guessing 99.9% of this forum would vigorously contest both statements.

Fallout 4 has many merits which we should be willing to praise, but also many flaws which we should be willing to address and critique. Game is far from perfect, and Bethesda needs to start taking flack for this nonsense or they have literally zero reasons to ever clean up their act.