Settlers Suck

Chud

Chud

Still Mildly Glowing
Fallout 4's undercooked, a terrible RPG. I'm not debating that. I do however, try and find some fun and roleplaying where I can, and that's where my growing frustration with settlers comes in. They're pointless, other than using them for resource gathering and shop running. They're good for settlement protection. Well, downright war-like. I've had all of my settlers run over to a raider or super mutant base, and lay waste to all. We're the good guys, right?

But the settlers. The generic settlers, with their bland Settler name [Seriously, why can I not rename them? Or how about a random name generator? I might gain more of a connection to these dummies if they had a name], their tendency to stand around like dolts, sometimes hovering in mid-air, are really killing any hopes I had for mild roleplaying.

I'll go to my shop keeper, wanting to trade, the hours on his shop clearly showing he's still open, only to get the option to swap gear. Then there's the stupid dialogue options for Trade and Barter. They mean the same thing. It took me a while early on in game, to figure out that Barter was the trading option, not Trade. Wouldn't Swap have made more sense than Trade for swapping gear?

And then there's the major flaw, the thing that makes me hate settlers with a blinding passion: Theft. Now theft could be an interesting wrinkle if done right, even leading to a mystery-style radiant quest, but no, they just grab weapons, ammo, and power armor whenever a raider pops up. I've lost power armor helmets thanks to this. Thankfully nothing rare or hard to replace, but still annoying. And I had removed the fusion cores from each suit, only to learn later on they can snag them from regular containers I've built. This "feature" makes me so livid. I had tossed my unsued fusion cores into a regular container, so as to avoid using them, when I have a bunch of partly used ones I'd like to use up first. Grah!
 
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Hey pal, could you break this up into paragraphs? Because I'm not going to waste my time sifting through a wall of text.
 
The settlement system just seems half-baked in general, like it was more of an afterthought then an integral system to the game. The odd bugs like settlers spawning on top of objects and spawn locations during enemy raids to pathing in complex building is just a mess. It feels so lazy for a feature it looks like they wanna hang a lot of their DLC plans on.

I've been running two mods that help with several of your issues.

Better Settlers

This one increases the variety of settlers, their equipment, and other values. I ended up setting them as mortal and it make dealing with raids way more fun and interesting when you can lose have a settlement if your defenses are in decent shape or locations.

Don't Call Me Settler

Don't Call Me Settler allows your settlers to spawn with random names taken from the codsworth spoken name list. It also lets you change the ratio of female to male settlers, rename settlers, and gives you their current job title under their name.

With the GECK now in beta I expect the community to make settlements an really cool feature over time, its just a shame that Bethesda totally dropped the ball on this.
 
Thanks for the suggested mods, yet sadly I'm a lowly console user; I won't be able to use mods until June when they get released on the PS4. But I'm going to keep an eye out for those and others in the future. Thing is, I kind of like building settlements, but the half-assed nature of it is just lousy. And I cannot wait for a mod that keeps their damned thieving hands off my stuff.
 
Codsworth has lines recorded for like a thousand different names!
But it's too difficult to get a random name generator for settlers.

I mean, that's far too difficult.
Why just look at all of the indie titles with rouge-like elements that use it.
That's where all of their budget went, that's why they're indie titles.
Cause name generation is hard to do.
 
I wonder if the voice actor for Codsworth got a bonus for having to sit there and record all of those individual names.
 
R.Graves said:
Are those really on the list cuz my name wasn't...
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The names, Todd, Howard, Pete, Hines, Emil and Pagliarulo are. I'm not a huge AAA Game dev, but I know that if I was making a modifyable game I probably wouldn't put my full name in the voice assets as well as a reconstruction of my face. That's just asking someone to do something extremely inappropriate. Then again, I'm not self proclaimed writer from Boston that was questionably put in charge of game design.
 
Mr Fish said:
Codsworth has lines recorded for like a thousand different names!
But it's too difficult to get a random name generator for settlers.

I mean, that's far too difficult.
Why just look at all of the indie titles with rouge-like elements that use it.
That's where all of their budget went, that's why they're indie titles.
Cause name generation is hard to do.
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All the names could've went to the settlers in an RNG based system for naming them but instead all those resources went to Codsworth. We just had to have "Muh robits butler call me by my character's name assfarts in a gimmicky system where your butler says your wacky name.".
 
MercenarySnake said:
All the names could've went to the settlers in an RNG based system for naming them but instead all those resources went to Codsworth. We just had to have "Muh robits butler call me by my character's name assfarts in a gimmicky system where your butler says your wacky name.".
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I honestly don't think replayabilty was factored into 4. Everything seems centered around impressing someone who will play once.
 
DirtyOldShoe said:
I honestly don't think replayabilty was factored into 4. Everything seems centered around impressing someone who will play once.
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Yeah with all the shit put into the game like Cabot house, kid in a fridge, children of the atom unprotected in radiation...That was impressive, impressively INSULTING TO MY INTELLIGENCE!!!

You are right though, from other people's responses of "each character being the same"(unless you do some hardcore LARPING) it seems they fell flat with the player character diversity(like SPECIAL stats, skills, etc) let alone good content like side quests.
 
The grindfest with stuff like companion affection (all based on doing the same actions they like time and time and time again) shows their philosophy; one playthrough and just keep playing that forever, hence the insane amount of radiant quests that never ever end. Starting a new game, unless you use a mod to remove level requirements from persk, basically always goes the exact same way, every single time. It's basically pointless even bothering.
 
Radiosity said:
The grindfest with stuff like companion affection (all based on doing the same actions they like time and time and time again) shows their philosophy; one playthrough and just keep playing that forever, hence the insane amount of radiant quests that never ever end. Starting a new game, unless you use a mod to remove level requirements from persk, basically always goes the exact same way, every single time. It's basically pointless even bothering.
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Gotta love Bethesda's "gamey" approach to the whole game.
 
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