I do believe it is time for me to whine mightily about Fallout 4.

[EXos]

Thing is F4 is boring. The quests feel like grind quests most of the times, nothing changes I haven't seen anyone actually take over something (except those bloody farms where you have to do EVERYTHING.

It feels as if everything revolves around the protagonist and if he is not around F-all happens. In NV you've had the threat of war between the three factions and if you progressed with one the others would do something.
Here they all sit around waiting for you to actually do something.

In short. I've had more fun with Syndicate than F4. And to think it was a contender for GOTY after Witcher and MGS is laughable. I'm not impressed at all.

 

[faefrost]

I agree with you on the sneak part, the perk is absolutely useless. I had maxed out my sneak perk, and it feels like they still catch wind of me easily.

Honestly Fusion Cores aren't a big deal to get, that is if you don't mind using the infinite caps glitch to buy all the fusion cores around, or the duplication glitch with Dogmeat. The problem with the power armor is keeping it in tip top shape, as in keeping it constantly repaired, the first suit you get will be torn to shreds in a few fire fights, so you have to keep stock on the proper supplies to keep it running, which means you either have to buy the materials, or search for them.

Sneak almost seems an odd binary. I also found maxed out Sneak Perk didn't't really do anything, even with 9 or 10 points Agility. But damn, read 5 of the Covert Operations Manuals and the mobs shove past you without Agro, while they are running around screaming that they know you are out there. I walk around and sniper rifle their heads at point blank range.

I share some of your misgivings about FO4. I mean don't get me wrong, it will easily be my most played game this year. I will devour every cubic yard of it. But it still feels a step back from it's predecessors. The environment is nowhere near as content rich as FO3, which had sites and tunnels and caves and encounters every few feet. It doesn't have the complex story, characters or companions of FONV, and it doesn't have the lush fulfilling visuals and world that Skyrim had. It feels smaller than each of its predecessors in some way. I mean in terms of the world there really is very little new. No or very very few spectacular new monsters or encounter mechanics. Major things, such as the Minutemen feel rushed or unfinished. The only really well fleshed out faction story is BOS. So it sucks to be you if your player choice is "non asshole". (What we used to call "good karma")

 

[IceForce]

So anyway, the Glowing Sea is kinda annoying to traverse. So once I unlocked the Vertibird transport I thought 'Ah HA! I can just fly OVER the Glowing Sea!'

Yeahh, well, I tried it. Pretty funny actually. When I landed I was immediately surrounded by close to a dozen radscorpions who had all 'teleported' themselves to be next to me (that's how their 'burrow' ability works, it's just a teleport spell / racial ability as far as the game engine is concerned). They were all the radscorpions that had aggro'd during the trip over there.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

The environment is nowhere near as content rich as FO3, which had sites and tunnels and caves and encounters every few feet.

Really? It's WAY more dense than FO3.

A full play of FO3, with virtually every single POI visited, including all expansions, ran me just south of 100 hours. Fallout 4 hit 130 hours, and I hit maybe 75% of the content on offer (possibly less, it's hard to say). I would've poked at more, but I just getting sheer mechanics fatigue by that point.

I played both games in exactly the same way, at the same pace (lots of creeping around and sniping).

 

[veloper]

I know Oblivion had completely broken level scaling for the enemies, where you reached a particular level and kodiak bears and leopards started showing up, and you knew from that point on you were kind of fucked.

Not exactly - in Oblivion, everything levels with you so you have to take a very balanced approach to how you level. You want combat skills to match the enemy strength as you progress...while at the same time also levelling the non-combat skills.

This...didn't really work in practice because it meant that making a class in the way Oblivion wants you to fucks you royally. It's especially funny since some of the pre-made classes that are supposed to be combat oriented like the barbarian, I believe, actually suck super bad. Why? Because the damn Athletics skill - it levels up as you walk so it's not impossible to get of the jail, go do few quests just by running around in Imperial City, then go outside and get pwned by everybody because you've levelled up several times from just walking and you're combat skills aren't good enough. Of course, when you try to use your combat skills...you level up again thus making your enemies even stronger.

It was a vile system and Bethesda just cannot seem to grasp how to tie mechanics into their games. As of late this has resulted in them removing a lot of stuff partly because they are so bad at handling it.

It was not about balance.
All you had to do is leave the skills you use the most often as minor skills and then select for the Major skills those unimportant activities that you can easily schedule any time it becomes convenient.
You could screw balance and just go for maxed-out heavy armor and blades skills and little else at lower levels and play a super OP grunt.

In a way that made Oblivion's leveling system better than Skyrim's, because you were in complete control, once you figured it out. It did require some discipline to not completely abuse the system, but all Bethesda games are easy to break anyway.

 

[IceForce]

The environment is nowhere near as content rich as FO3, which had sites and tunnels and caves and encounters every few feet.

Really? It's WAY more dense than FO3.

Yeah, I have to agree. Bethesda have actually utilized the Z-axis this time around, instead of everything being flat and spread out.
In fact, the way the map is smaller kinda makes everything more dense automatically as a result. (Unless that's what faefrost was referring to, -- the smaller map size rather than the density.)

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Yeah, I have to agree. Bethesda have actually utilized the Z-axis this time around, instead of everything being flat and spread out.

In fact, the way the map is smaller kinda makes everything more dense automatically as a result. (Unless that's what faefrost was referring to, -- the smaller map size rather than the density.)

Frankly the utilization of the z axis works against it more often than not. It's more "realistic" and makes better use of the space, but fuck does it ever compromise performance. I'm not sure I need the game rendering shadows in spaces several hundred feet above my head.

In a way that made Oblivion's leveling system better than Skyrim's, because you were in complete control, once you figured it out. It did require some discipline to not completely abuse the system, but all Bethesda games are easy to break anyway.

Oof. I consider Oblivion a clinic for how to make a completely bug-fuck horrible leveling system. Quite seriously possibly the worst leveling mechanics in the history of the genre. I want to know how much paint they huffed developing it.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Okay so I've accidentally ignored ol' IceForce here. Anyone know how to reverse that? It's not making itself immediately evident.

Grats, IceForce, on being the first person I ever ignored, albeit inadvertently.

 

[DoPo]

I know Oblivion had completely broken level scaling for the enemies, where you reached a particular level and kodiak bears and leopards started showing up, and you knew from that point on you were kind of fucked.

Not exactly - in Oblivion, everything levels with you so you have to take a very balanced approach to how you level. You want combat skills to match the enemy strength as you progress...while at the same time also levelling the non-combat skills.

This...didn't really work in practice because it meant that making a class in the way Oblivion wants you to fucks you royally. It's especially funny since some of the pre-made classes that are supposed to be combat oriented like the barbarian, I believe, actually suck super bad. Why? Because the damn Athletics skill - it levels up as you walk so it's not impossible to get of the jail, go do few quests just by running around in Imperial City, then go outside and get pwned by everybody because you've levelled up several times from just walking and you're combat skills aren't good enough. Of course, when you try to use your combat skills...you level up again thus making your enemies even stronger.

It was a vile system and Bethesda just cannot seem to grasp how to tie mechanics into their games. As of late this has resulted in them removing a lot of stuff partly because they are so bad at handling it.

It was not about balance.
All you had to do is leave the skills you use the most often as minor skills and then select for the Major skills those unimportant activities that you can easily schedule any time it becomes convenient.

Believe me, I know very well how the system works. However, what you're describing is how the system is broken.

The system is supposed to work as I described. It doesn't because of the issues I described. The underlying reason is because Bethesda fucking fail at design.

What you're describing is the workaround...which is Bethesda fucking failing at design again in a different way.

The entire system is bad and the fact that it doesn't work and you can sort of hack around it by exploiting a different aspect of its not working is a pretty good indicator that it sucks.

 

[veloper]

In a way that made Oblivion's leveling system better than Skyrim's, because you were in complete control, once you figured it out. It did require some discipline to not completely abuse the system, but all Bethesda games are easy to break anyway.

Oof. I consider Oblivion a clinic for how to make a completely bug-fuck horrible leveling system. Quite seriously possibly the worst leveling mechanics in the history of the genre. I want to know how much paint they huffed developing it.

Sure it was terrible, but it was so stupid and broken that Beth left a very easy (unintentional?) loophole for the player to escape the level-scaling problem.

 

[DoPo]

Okay so I've accidentally ignored ol' IceForce here. Anyone know how to reverse that? It's not making itself immediately evident.

Grats, IceForce, on being the first person I ever ignored, albeit inadvertently.

Umm, I've ignored him as well. Apparently. I'm pretty sure I didn't, though. In fact, I know I've not, since I don't have him in my ignored users list. This leads me to suspect that you haven't, either - you can see your ignore list here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/ignore].

This leads me to suspect that it's some Tech Team shenanigans. In other words, I blame Kross.

EDIT: and now IceForce is not ignored any more. Down with censorship!

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Umm, I've ignored him as well. Apparently. I'm pretty sure I didn't, though. In fact, I know I've not, since I don't have him in my ignored users list. This leads me to suspect that you haven't, either - you can see your ignore list here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/ignore].

This leads me to suspect that it's some Tech Team shenanigans. In other words, I blame Kross.

EDIT: and now IceForce is not ignored any more. Down with censorship!

That fixed it. Thanks.

THIS WILL TEACH YOU TO STEP OUT OF LINE, ICE FORCE. DON'T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN!

 

[IceForce]

Okay so I've accidentally ignored ol' IceForce here. Anyone know how to reverse that? It's not making itself immediately evident.

Grats, IceForce, on being the first person I ever ignored, albeit inadvertently.

Umm, I've ignored him as well. Apparently. I'm pretty sure I didn't, though. In fact, I know I've not, since I don't have him in my ignored users list. This leads me to suspect that you haven't, either - you can see your ignore list here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/ignore].

This leads me to suspect that it's some Tech Team shenanigans. In other words, I blame Kross.

It seems to be a glitch of some description, because apparently I've ignored myself. (I didn't even know that was possible.) I'll give it some time to pass (which site glitches often do of their own accord), and if nothing changes I'll go rattle the Tech Team's cage.

EDIT: Ah well, it fixed while I was posting this.

 

[veloper]

I know Oblivion had completely broken level scaling for the enemies, where you reached a particular level and kodiak bears and leopards started showing up, and you knew from that point on you were kind of fucked.

Not exactly - in Oblivion, everything levels with you so you have to take a very balanced approach to how you level. You want combat skills to match the enemy strength as you progress...while at the same time also levelling the non-combat skills.

This...didn't really work in practice because it meant that making a class in the way Oblivion wants you to fucks you royally. It's especially funny since some of the pre-made classes that are supposed to be combat oriented like the barbarian, I believe, actually suck super bad. Why? Because the damn Athletics skill - it levels up as you walk so it's not impossible to get of the jail, go do few quests just by running around in Imperial City, then go outside and get pwned by everybody because you've levelled up several times from just walking and you're combat skills aren't good enough. Of course, when you try to use your combat skills...you level up again thus making your enemies even stronger.

It was a vile system and Bethesda just cannot seem to grasp how to tie mechanics into their games. As of late this has resulted in them removing a lot of stuff partly because they are so bad at handling it.

It was not about balance.
All you had to do is leave the skills you use the most often as minor skills and then select for the Major skills those unimportant activities that you can easily schedule any time it becomes convenient.

Believe me, I know very well how the system works. However, what you're describing is how the system is broken.

The system is supposed to work as I described. It doesn't because of the issues I described. The underlying reason is because Bethesda fucking fail at design.

What you're describing is the workaround...which is Bethesda fucking failing at design again in a different way.

The entire system is bad and the fact that it doesn't work and you can sort of hack around it by exploiting a different aspect of its not working is a pretty good indicator that it sucks.

And still I prefer the older, more broken Bethesda systems...

Maybe I can best explain why I feel that way, like this: if you got something that's very broken it's useless, but if it's so completely broken that all the parts come loose, you can sometimes make something new out of it and the older Bethesda titles give the player so many more parts to play with.
The presentation becomes more crappy each time the further back you go of course, but those older systems were more fun to mess around with.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

I had actually just logged on with the intention of making a thread about the 'difficulty' in Fallout 4 and I share the exact same sentiment. I've got a save on Survival difficulty and I'm sitting at level 22. Just as you say, the decreased healing rate has forced me to be quite creative with cover and I've actually found a use for the buffs granted by food items. But taking 100% more damage whilst dealing 50% less is not difficult, it's just boring.
I have just dived into the entrance to Vault 81 in pursuit of Nick and the Triggermen are destroying me in my full suit of T-51c, yet they're tanking 4-5 VATS headshots from my .55 or .44 despite the Riflemen and Gunslinger perks. These guys have absolutely no DR, yet they're just soaking up damage like crazy.

My go-to solution to anything on survivor difficulty that I can't stealth-cheese my way through is chems, specifically psychojet.

It gives +25% damage and makes everything go slow motion for a bit. But while enemies will fire slower you can still fire a semi-automatic weapon at normal speed, or close to it. Slurping down one of those bad boys before running in with a high capacity combat shotgun takes care of damn near anything.

Yeah, I pretty much discovered Jet was god around level 13 or so, but it's not as useful against unrelenting automatic weapons. Regardless we shouldn't be having to cheese through every pack of enemies that roll on us... slowing down time and bum rushing everything gets old.

 

[Zhukov]

My go-to solution to anything on survivor difficulty that I can't stealth-cheese my way through is chems, specifically psychojet.

It gives +25% damage and makes everything go slow motion for a bit. But while enemies will fire slower you can still fire a semi-automatic weapon at normal speed, or close to it. Slurping down one of those bad boys before running in with a high capacity combat shotgun takes care of damn near anything.

Yeah, I pretty much discovered Jet was god around level 13 or so, but it's not as useful against unrelenting automatic weapons.

Yeah, this is true. Miniguns in particular will still ruin your shit. As will one-shot AoE weapons like missiles or the Fat Man.

Regardless we shouldn't be having to cheese through every pack of enemies that roll on us... slowing down time and bum rushing everything gets old.

Depends what you consider cheese I guess. I don't mind being forced to use everything at my disposal on max difficulty. Plus I kinda like the idea of a wasteland fighter furiously huffing every drug they can find in order to get an edge.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

Honestly, not a lot to add, just throwing myself into the "20 hours and bored now" group.

I'd like to know at what point they decided that companions were more important than quests. From what I've read, they're better written than most of the other things in the game. As a strict loner this annoys me greatly.

What happened to the people who wrote the Guild quests from Oblivion? Those were amazing. Its not even that hard to write and interesting, self-contained questline, but it just seems like Bethesda can't be arsed anymore. Maybe they took the lone dungeon designer from Oblivion and put him on writing duties, then shifted the writers to dungeon design?

It's very frustrating because there ARE glimmers of actual good storytelling in there. The one car park near a shopping center that has been converted into a maze and riddled with traps for example. I was genuinly interested in that amd finding out what was happening. Was there a group of survivors on the top level? A lone crazy guy? Some kind of engineering genius I could recruit to a settlement? You know what was up there? FUCKING NOTHING. There was a room with a bed.

I'm hoping Fallout 4 will make people notice that Betheda are a crappy company. Skyrim was a fluke. It's nearly as shallow as FO4 but it had a bit more care put into it so its flaws aren't as immediatly obvious (I wonder how many thousands of drauger I've killed at this point), but they're still there.

I look forward to TES VI, wherein are your perks and skills are automatically decided by your race and doled out to you at random times and every conversation is a cut scene during which you choose if you agree nicely or you agree but are an arse about it.

 

[LetalisK]

I look at FO4 the same way as I do the Mount and Blade series: it tries to do a lot of different things and isn't particularly good at any of them. However, when all that mediocre is put together, I still enjoy the whole somehow.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I've sunk 160 hours into Fallout 4, and I'm honestly not even sure if I'm enjoying it.

One moment I'll be having fun, the next moment I'll be frustrated about some dumb mechanic or the shitty dialogue/characters/factions/story or just how absurdly easy the game is even on Survivor for a Stealth/Rifle character.

I feel like I'm mostly just being a completionist with it for no other reason than it's Fallout. I love Fallout/Fallout 2/Fallout: Tactics so much that I keep getting suckered into buying these first-person games, when really, none of them are that great (and most of the greatness I've found in them has come from the modding community, go figure).

 

[3asytarg3t]

No, none of them are that great. And this has been true for awhile now. The realization of this has just been a long time coming.

None of the FPS RPGs are really very good at all, they fail both as shooters (or replace w/ weapon of choice, say sword for W3) and are laughably bad at narrative, character development, really anything even remotely resembling story.

My solution: Stop playing them and play the genres that are suited for PC games. Strategy being one example, but really anything capable of emergent stories created by the player's actions rather than devs.

If I want story, character development, plot, decent writing, I'll look to the entertainments capable of providing it: cinema and literature, and stop setting myself up for disappointment looking for it in a medium still in its infancy that has decades to go before it even approaches the worst movie or book I've watched or read just this year alone.