Bullet Sponge enemies = false, artificial difficulty levels.

[ZigzagPX4]

Yeah well until they ditch that worthless tacked together engine then things like battles will suffer. I mean since when did a "huge battle" consist of only 12 people, that's such a joke and makes me laugh every time they put these "epic battles" like the civil war for Skyrim.

They insist on sticking to being able to pick every small item up, which I admit is a nice touch even if it doesn't serve any established gameplay mechanic and actually bugs the game out so much, but the truth is every game with this mechanic (Half-Life, Dishonored) has never had any open-worlds for that reason.

By having to save all placed items on each "grid" for in-game weeks, they're causing constant save bloating, and probably spent significant amount of time on getting around the save corruption on settlement building, when they could've just switched to a new engine.

Then again, they should've gotten a new lead producer and a new writer altogether...

 

[zegh8578]

Yeah well until they ditch that worthless tacked together engine then things like battles will suffer. I mean since when did a "huge battle" consist of only 12 people, that's such a joke and makes me laugh every time they put these "epic battles" like the civil war for Skyrim.

The civil war in Skyrim brought my computer to a grinding goddamn halt. I litterally spent 15 minutes... a quarter of an hour - to just desperately MOVE towards the nearest door anywhere, to change cells. This would conclude the battle for me (instead of fail it, luckily)
Everything just stopped working, we're talking one frame per 5 seconds or so...

 

[Immortalkickass]

The only artificial thing about the combat difficulty is the Legendary mutates. I was fine on the hardest difficulty setting, until i keep getting screwed over because a Legendary reset its HP to negate my sneak critical, making my sneak build useless. It was so frustrating and immersion breaking, when a Legendary raider can activate Super Saiyan mode when taking a .50 cal to the face.

Also, stims are too weak on Survival, it feels more like HP regeneration rather than healing. There is a fine line between healing (over time) and regeneration, and stims should heal. Leave the regeneration to the weak stuff like food/drink.

 

[Mudguy47]

No Irwin you just need to git gud. This game is ez pz. You just suck at this game.

OT: I feel that bullet sponges are just Beth's solution to difficulty. New Vegas never had this issue, you could kill a deathclaw almost as easy as it could kill you. The DT system works infinitely better than the DR, which I assume F4 is using. A better way to do it is use them in tandem, similar to how JSawyers mod did it.

 

[Lanfear]

The slow stimpak regeneration was pretty much the only thing I liked about survival, and even then the healing effect stacked (what the fuck?), so once you had thousands of the things you could just make yourself immortal for a minute or so by bringing up your pip boy and popping 10 of them at once, causing your entire health pool to regenerate fully every 2 seconds for the duration.

 

[DirtyOldShoe]

I would have to assume they give the enemy all that health and damage due to the brain dead AI. I mean seriously, I had Piper downstairs in a building rubbing up against the front of a ghoul zombie and that thing stood there blind then turned away.

AI is not limited to the engine and though I do agree that it is time for that engine to take a long nap, AI is entirely customizable, it has been in all their games. There are two problems that lead to poorly behaving NPCs.

Navmesh and Combat AI Package.

Navmesh from my understanding isn't a matter of being customized as opposed to being optimized. Bethesda sacrificed their navmesh system by including it in the meshes of some if not all building pieces. I believe the justification for proper pathfinding in modable settlements. For those that are not aware. Navmesh is the invisible world the NPC sees, it is all data to them and how they interact with everything. You could say it is what makes them smart. If you have bad pathfinding, your NPCs will seem stupid. Fallout 4 has the worst pathfinding in all their games.

Combat AI is 100% customizable and very diverse effects can be obtained through testing and editing. The issue is that Bethesda uses 1 template for combat for types of enemies. Ghouls have one template, Deathclaws have one template. For humans there will be a few. Melee, unarmed, Projectile types like small gun, big gun and rifle. All Gunners, Raiders, Followers, Settlers all use the same package. You might not see it, but your mind can recognize the repeat actions. This can be solved in two ways. Make multiple varied templates for the same weapon type, have more advanced for higher level npcs, bosses and legendary. Build a custom pallet for special NPCs

Bethesda uses too many templates and formulas for building, this happens with dungeons in Skyrim with the boss Chest formula that is in every cave or dungeon. This happens in Fallout 4 with random generic template NPC everywhere you go.

 

[cratchety ol joe]

AC, DT, DR, HP

All that's needed, and far from complex... Sadly because of "FPS > anything ever" mentality..

AC is made moot, because we now rely on twitch shooter gameplay, not RNG character stat driven gameplay.
DT seems like maths made by the devil himself is you work for Beth.
DR ... I can help that think this is too close to "Durrrr" it's that simplistic
HP, how did Hewlett Packard get here?

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Just played a few minutes of Fallout 4:

"There's a new settlement that needs your help" followed by "go to Corvega Assembly Plant and KILL LOOT RETURN"

Got killed by grenade aimbot spamming AI in the plant. Exited the game immediately.

 

[Lanfear]

Horseshit never changes.

 

[DirtyOldShoe]

Just played a few minutes of Fallout 4

Do you see where you made the mistake?

 

[MercenarySnake]

Do you see where you made the mistake?

You know it'd be funny if one of the new DLCs had grenade throwing teddy bears.

 

[DirtyOldShoe]

You know it'd be funny if one of the new DLCs had grenade throwing teddy bears.

Your crazy Snake, your going to turn into a provocatively positioned Teddy at this rate, then what? Huh, how will you deal when your face down in another Teddy's erogenous zone, patently waiting for something, anything to knock you over?

 

[MercenarySnake]

Your crazy Snake, your going to turn into a provocatively positioned Teddy at this rate, then what? Huh, how will you deal when your face down in another Teddy's erogenous zone, patently waiting for something, anything to knock you over?

I was just giving Bethesda silly ideas. I wasn't the only one thinking about Bethesda's award winning universally acclaimed environmental storytelling.


Anyways I wonder what would happen if one or all DLCs were GOOD. I wonder how places like NMA and other places would react, what would our community say?

 

[Graham2077]

I was just giving Bethesda silly ideas. I wasn't the only one thinking about Bethesda's award winning universally acclaimed environmental storytelling.


Anyways I wonder what would happen if one or all DLCs were GOOD. I wonder how places like NMA and other places would say.

If the DLC's are good, then i'll give props to Bethesda. I don't have any doubt in my mind though that they won't live up to NV's DLC, and just going by the description alone, I don't really care for any more stories involving the children of atom or synths. Most of the "fans" around Reddit and places like that are already talking about how amazing the DLC sounds, so I bet that it will get universal praise anyway.

 

[DirtyOldShoe]

I was just giving Bethesda silly ideas. I wasn't the only one thinking about Bethesda's award winning universally acclaimed environmental storytelling.

So was I

Anyways I wonder what would happen if one or all DLCs were GOOD. I wonder how places like NMA and other places would react, what would our community say?

I bought Fallout 4 so that I could have a valid opinion of it, give it a good amount of time and benefit of the doubt. I will not purchase any mod tier DLC for it, nor will I buy AAA DLC for it. My opinion when that comes, it doesn't matter how good the DLC is, it is a branch of a boring recycled tree and by association it is bad.

 

[Deleted member 93956]

I'm remodding to the max New Vegas and playing a f...artload of indies after i left Fo4. Why? It had to do with LITERALLY doing 20 radiant quests supposedly needed for the Minutemen quest that asks you to "recruit more settlements for """"our""" cause", ridiculous as it sounds, IT IS the main quest of the faction.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

I'm remodding to the max New Vegas and playing a f...artload of indies after i left Fo4. Why? It had to do with LITERALLY doing 20 radiant quests supposedly needed for the Minutemen quest that asks you to "recruit more settlements for """"our""" cause", ridiculous as it sounds, IT IS the main quest of the faction.

Yea there's nothing to do in Fallout 4 besides bulls*** procedurally generated radiant MMO KILL LOOT RETURN quests. I recently tried to replay Fallout 4 with the female character, and I immediately tried to wipe out Preston Gravy and his entire group and guess what? They are ALL ESSENTIAL NPCS. The F*** kind of Fallout game is this?

I picked up Underrail from GOG and like the fact that it actually lets you do something besides KILL LOOT RETURN. You can actually talk to people in the game.

I believe a lot of the people who are still fanboy-ing this game are going to end up realizing later that it really is an empty, shallow world in the end and they just weren't aware enough to see that. One could argue that ALL video games are wastes of time, but Fallout 4 REALLY makes you aware that it is all an empty waste for an empty story that has no meaning or quality.

Amazing how much a dialogue wheel and voiced protagonist can ruin a videogame.

 

[Deleted member 93956]

Actually, the part that kills me is that i played Fo4 after completing Borderlands 2 around to 95% with a buddy, and the annoying feeling when somebody switches between relatively simillar games was almost nonexistent! The main actual difference was the bloated map, and the waay slower and less varied gunplay

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Actually, the part that kills me is that i played Fo4 after completing Borderlands 2 around to 95% with a buddy, and the annoying feeling when somebody switches between relatively simillar games was almost nonexistent! The main actual difference was the bloated map, and the waay slower and less varied gunplay

That is the biggest insult for me. I loved every single Fallout game that I have played: 1, 2, Tactics, Fallout 3, New Vegas. I loved EVERY ONE including Fallout 3. Then Fallout 4 comes out and it's a clone of Borderlands!

I personally never liked Borderlands because I felt it was wasted potential - they could have built their own version of Fallout with that universe and art style but instead went with the shallow MMO grindfest. Fine. That is fair enough, it was a new series and filled that niche of MMO grindfests for people who like that stuff. But then why the f*** would the developers at Bethesda think they should turn Fallout into THAT? Now we have 2 Borderlands series and 0 Fallout series.

So now there is a totally empty niche of post-apocalyptic Fallout RPGs that hopefully Obsidian or InXile will get the greenlight to fill since Bethesda clearly wants to turn Fallout into Borderlands/Far Cry. I honestly won't be surprised if one of the DLCs is a co-op mode for Fallout 4.

 

[ZigzagPX4]

I personally never liked Borderlands because I felt it was wasted potential

I've never really understood that argument. The Borderlands series' main draw was always comedy. Most of its "lore" makes fun of something in modern culture one way or another. It was written and built that way, or at least from the second game on. Inconsistent, wacky, and fun - I wouldn't have Borderlands any other way, really.

It looks like it has plenty of potential but once you sit down to think about it at a table with other writers, you realise that Borderlands thrives only by making fun of clichés and by subverting tropes, and without all of that, there's really nothing substantial enough to build a serious RPG out of it. If you don't believe me, play or watch Tales from the Borderlands. It runs on humour and drama but the world itself is basically just satire of today's society to a more subtle degree than how GTA does it.

(Also, the whole point of grinding is that it's aimed for a multiplayer crowd. Borderlands isn't the type of game to be playing by yourself, just saying. Besides, apart from it and Destiny, the loot-shoot-grind genre is as small as the cRPG genre.)

The Borderlands series from the second game on aims for the same market as Saints Row games from the third one on does. Presumably, it's also who Bethesda are partly aiming to appeal to with Fallout 4. Take it from someone who really liked Borderlands and Far Cry games, Fallout 4 fails to capture the spirit of either.



On that note, has anyone felt like Fallout 4 doesn't seem like it's in an alternate post-apocalyptic future of the Cold War, but rather, a 50's TV show about the adventures of an alternate post-apocalyptic future of the Cold War? Every time I hear the dialogue and observe the environment it feels like I'm surrounded by actors on a movie set. A Truman Show vibe, so to speak.