official Fallout 4

[techbeck]

Just now, soniqstylz said:

I think you have to have an empty LVL3 clinic

I did.  I think she needs a surgery center.  From what I have read.  So I built one and am waiting to see what happens if I meet her a gain.  I found a pretty good random spawn point where I found her twice before.

[soniqstylz]

Just now, techbeck said:

I did.  I think she needs a surgery center.  From what I have read.  So I built one and am waiting to see what happens if I meet her a gain.  I found a pretty good random spawn point where I found her twice before.

A LVL3 clinic is a surgery center

[techbeck]

Just now, soniqstylz said:

A LVL3 clinic is a surgery center

Yea, soon as I clicked post,  I realized that...haha.  Hopefully I find her again.  The spawn point almost always has some random spawn in it so that is a plus.

[dragontology]

Anybody max affinity with MacCready without cheating, and what was that like? I save scummed the crap out of him. Steal, quick save, load. Rinse, repeat. Only had to steal about a dozen things to max him out, though. I really don't like stealing, you don't have to to get the things you can steal, and things like magazines and bobbleheads are never owned. (AFAIK.)

 

My wife was watching when I maxed him, and she didn't believe that you could romance him (me with a male character). So I did the romance option and said I never wanted to be without him, etc. We both had a good laugh. Got the Killshot perk, and then immediately sent him to Covenant. My wife gave me so much grief for breaking that "poor boy's" heart... until I showed her a couple clips of what he was like as a kid, in Fallout 3. Still, I'm glad Bethesda redeemed his character. Would have been nice to meet his son, and watch him actually get cured, though. (I wonder if Lucy was from Little Lamplight? I don't think so. Did we ever find out Princess's given name?) So he's got a good story arc. And you can give someone a bit of hell for romancing all the romanceable characters of both genders, but the pragmatic gamer will romance every romanceable character of both genders, and put one in each of the major settlements, so that if you sleep there, you get that bonus.

 

Hidden (?) achievement you may have missed. Home run. Run the bases in Diamond City. Home Plate, the player home, is not Home Plate. Home Plate is where you first come in. The bases are marked I, II, and III. Just run (sprinting isn't necessary) from Home through the bases and then back home. The achievement will pop shortly after. There's another one called Touchdown that involves throwing the nuclear football. I know mutants can throw Mini Nukes. Can the player? Or do you just have to shoot the Fat Man once?

 

Looking for some light endgame spoilers. I've beaten the game with the Institute, and that required eliminating the Brotherhood and the Railroad. Is there an end game where I don't eliminate any faction? Such as, perhaps, with the Minutemen? Or have I done everything for the Minutemen when I have all settlements? Is their last quest the one where you build and test the artillery? Or do you have to eliminate at least one faction (if not two?) to complete the game?

[+Red King Subscriber²]

I might write full review if I get back to the game, but in short, warning spoilers,

 

Fallout 4 is not a role playing game,

1. Your character has a voice. You know that familiar voice in your head - the one you think with -  the one is YOU? That is no longer your character's voice.
2. You are no longer the one talking. You are merely giving one of four suggestions and hoping it comes out right.
3. You are no longer in control. There is no choice in dialogue and actions. Want to kill your annoying narc companion instead of curing her addiction? Too bad - no effort was made for a branching companion story. Want to live in a cult after giving up all your possessions? Too bad.
4. There is also a major disconnect between you and the character you are forced to play because Bethesda made no effort in building an emotional connection to your pre-fallout family. For some reason Bethesda tried to build a story around this anyway. If your pre-war family was just filler, it would have been a lot better. Thus the disconnect between what I would want to do and role play as and what the character is written to do.

The world is designed around you and you can tell this fact breaking immersion,

1. Everyone trusts you instantly or after a kill / fetch quest; no one questions you.
2. You are the only one that can build and manage a settlement. No one else can. No one else can decorate, clean the place, add fencing, or call you an idiot for placing a bed out in the open.
3. Everyone can use power armor without any training or difficulty and it is everywhere.
4. Your companions can't loot their own gear and weapons - you have to dress them up like children.
5. The world is designed as an amusement park for you. Something to loot every 5 minutes, something to kill every 1 minute.
6. You are the first person to loot everything. Apparently no one needed those health supplies in the bathroom before you came along ... every time.
7. There is no way trading can work between settlements considering how enemy packed the world is.
8. The world should be designed to be fully functional and self sufficient without you.
9. The Bethesda's trope that "you are the one that will change everything" is getting annoying. All Bethesda games do this.

Settlement building, a focus for FO4, is poorly designed,

1. You can't repair things like eroded concrete walls, building damage.
2. You can't clean up trash or destroyed parts of buildings.
3. You can't level terrain / get rid of lakes.
4. You can't get rid of grass.
5. The snapping mechanic works poorly and it may take you a few attempts to snap things properly.
6. Certain things can't be scrapped for some reason even thought they are objects (I resorted to using "disable" from console to remove them).
7. Weather effects do no check for ceilings / walls - you can't hide from the weather in your built structures.
8. Settlements are tiny in population density.
9. I have spent a lot of time designing settlements - but, now that I think about it, I was never rewarded for it. It feels like filler. It is filler.

Romance,

1. Bethesda took romance tips from pornography: "Oh you opened 50 locks, I think I am in love with you".
2. I was disgusted when my narc bullet bag "companion" started hitting on me.

Game engine,

1. The game looks terrible by modern standards. This would be a non-issue if the gameplay was good and the story was good, but...
2. It is not asking for much either. I have played Crysis 3 (early 2013!) and Far Cry 4. Those are gorgeous open world games.
3. Maybe the settlement building was a late add-on? It seems that many limitations of settlement building are engine related.
4. And while at it, why is the AI so bad? Like standing in one place and getting shot bad.
5. And here is the ultimatum, if the engine did not improve much and everything looks blurry and terrible, why can't I achieve 60FPS at 4K? It is not even optimized!
6. Loading times are long too. That is completely unacceptable for an SSD and 12 core CPU.

Other thoughts,

1. With the abandonment of role playing elements, FO4 doesn't focus on gun play.
2. User interface is terrible.
3. While FO4 looks, visually, less bleak. The world itself is more bleak and has less civilization.
4. It is a linear game with an open world.
5. There is no innovation. Hacking and lock picking mini-games have been around for a long time in Bethesda games. They get tedious like the towers in FC3 and FC4. And it is the same lock and lock mini-game on everything. It doesn't work for immersion and wouldn't take a long time to diversify. If you played other Beth games you probably had 200+ hours of the same mini-game.
6. The game target kids by not investing in mature elements such as story, AI, consequences, romance, and dialogue.

OK. I am bored now...

 

EDIT:  I should inform that my review is heavily inspired by expectations building from NV gameplay as well as other RPG / Shooter titles that pushed the genre before FO4.

 

TLDR: FO4 is cheap and had very little effort put into it. 2/5

[spaceelf]

30 minutes ago, _Alexander said:

Game engine,

I disagree on much of that.  The textures aren't the greatest, but the engine and general quality is much higher than with Skyrim or Fallout 3/NV and there is a lot of stuff in the average scene.  I haven't seen blurriness or any of that.  I don't play at 4K though, so I can't exactly try what you've got going on.  I don't have crazy load times either.

 

Shrug.

 

My main problem is whatever the hell's going on with the audio that I can't play in 5.1 over my HDMI setup cause its so quiet.

[dragontology]

All those problems, and yet, I love it. I tried Far Cry 3 and it was not fun. It was pretty, but it was not fun. It was difficult and my efforts were not rewarded. I played it briefly on a friend's Xbox. I will not pay any price for it. It would be too expensive at 1¢. It would take up space on my hard drive. It would consume time. I don't hate it, or its fans. I just don't want to play a game like that.

 

Bethesda has a formula and it works. I would like to see them change it up. And they have. The settlement thing is really just a dumbed-down Creation Kit, their level editor. Want proof? Look up tutorials on dungeon building in Skyrim's Creation Kit. I remember seeing the settlement reveal at E3, and my first thought was, they put the CK right in the game itself. But the CK doesn't have snapping. Or it does but you can override it. I don't recall, I never actually made anything. But you can add all the things, obviously. Dirt mounds and such. And you can clip them through the walls to make organic, caved-in dungeons. And you can make things static, so they're immune to the physics engine. Like those candelabras and whatnot you couldn't kick over or Fus Ro Dah. Those were static. And that was an option.

 

They really need to update the lock picking, or at least the lock. I'm pretty sure that lock with the X carved in it was in Fallout 3 and Skyrim. Probably New Vegas as well. The sensitivity has been turned up. You can't fine tune it like before. And the hacking. Look at Saints Row 4 and Deus Ex Human Revolution. I really wish they hadn't brought back the Mastermind clone again. There are other options.

 

Romance shouldn't be in the game. The guy just lost his wife and son. Watched his wife get shot in the face. I do all the romance quests to move the story along, I don't really care. I just want the perks. And who knows, maybe the Sole Survivor and their spouse were swingers. That happened in the 50s, you just didn't talk about it, hear about it. So who knows, they mourn the spouse's death, but they would have wanted them to go on and have fun, so like, guys, girls, you don't care, you're not getting tied down, they had marriage in Skyrim and it had no place, and there's no place for it in Fallout, and it's not present. So maybe the Dovahkiin was looking to settle down after saving the world, but the Sole Survivor isn't. We can look at it one way or another way, or possibly a third way.

 

Bottom line though, it's a Bethesda game. You can fix it. Like, at least three of the issues brought up are already fixed by mods. When the Creation Kit is released, so much more will be fixed. And now that mods will be on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, the issues are even more of a moot point.

 

But, you know, play what you like. I paid $130 for Fallout 4. Steam activated it on my wife's account, not mine, and told me to pound sand when I asked for help. I was sick for the first two days I had the game. And the Pip-boy didn't fit my phone, even though they said it would fit a bigger one. I could complain a lot more. But I'm not unhappy with my purchase in the least. Despite all its problems, I love the game. 

[spaceelf]

Hah, my audio issue was entirely on my end...had the receiver set wrong o.o

 

...wonder how long that's been weird and I didn't even notice.

 

Boingy.

[soniqstylz]

On 1/1/2016 at 8:50 PM, dragontology said:

Hidden (?) achievement you may have missed. Home run. Run the bases in Diamond City. Home Plate, the player home, is not Home Plate. Home Plate is where you first come in. The bases are marked I, II, and III. Just run (sprinting isn't necessary) from Home through the bases and then back home. The achievement will pop shortly after. There's another one called Touchdown that involves throwing the nuclear football. I know mutants can throw Mini Nukes. Can the player? Or do you just have to shoot the Fat Man once?

 

Looking for some light endgame spoilers. I've beaten the game with the Institute, and that required eliminating the Brotherhood and the Railroad. Is there an end game where I don't eliminate any faction? Such as, perhaps, with the Minutemen? Or have I done everything for the Minutemen when I have all settlements? Is their last quest the one where you build and test the artillery? Or do you have to eliminate at least one faction (if not two?) to complete the game?

As far as the football acheivement, it's for getting blowed up real good by one of the suicide mutants.

 

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Touchdown!

 

There isn't an ending where you don't eliminate at least one faction, but there is one where you eliminate only the Institute.  You have to work for it and do things just right.  Normally you align with RR, BoS. or Ins, and the Minutemen remain neutral and ally with you no matter what.

 

So you can go 

Minutemen Only

MM & RR

MM & BoS

MM & Ins

MM, RR, & BoS

[dragontology]

Well, I'm on the path to Minutemen + Railroad now. Elder Maxson isn't pleased that I didn't seek the Brotherhood's help in making the teleporter (i.e. they don't control it, LOL) but he says all will be forgiven if I take the Holotape to Proctor Ingram. I haven't done so yet, as I think Tinker Tom wants it as well. Not sure where to go with that. According to a video I found, I've progressed too far with the Railroad to keep the Brotherhood on board. I think I will give the Holotape to Sturgis.

 

I'm on my second character. I did the Institute with my first, and didn't like where things ended up following them. I have a feeling following the Brotherhood will end the same way. Maybe I should make a master save (I like to look at the sky or some monument so it's easy to find) and then rush for a Brotherhood ending, and then go back and do it for the Railroad. Shame though, I like Danse and don't want to let him down a second time (after working for the Institute).

[+Asmodai MVC]

I finished my first playthrough last night.

*Spoilers below* (I'm not going to hide the whole post with the spoiler tag as it's not just on off hand comment but if admins want to edit or delete it go ahead)

I'll try to be a little vague to minimize spoilers but I'm going to talk about my ending so there will DEFINITELY be some, you've been warned.

 

I tried really hard NOT to pick a side for as long as I could.

For the Railroad I got to Underground Uncover and did it far enough to get the password for Code Defender but I never turned it in.

For the Institute and the Brotherhood of Steel I got to Mass Fusion at which point the manner in which I entered the building seemed to permanently create an enemy.

For the Minutemen I got to Defend the Castle but this caused many of my Brotherhood quests to automatically fail (I'm not sure why Brotherhood quests fail due to defending the castle from the Institute attack but whatever.)

 

Ultimately I decided to go the BoS route so I reloaded my save prior to Defend the Castle and went to Mass Fusion via the BoS route.  Of note is that when you get to the ground floor you can leave and do other quests and come back later to finish Mass Fusion but just arriving there via the BoS route make the Institute an enemy.

 

From that point I just did straight BoS quests and after I finished I'm still the General of the Minutemen.  The Institute and Railroad are gone.  I finished the main plot most the way through level 49.  I did a radiant quest Corsair hunt to get the XP to ding 50 (it's a PS Trophy).  I'm pretty happy with how things turned out.  There were things I wish I could have done differently but I don't think the game allows it.  I really enjoyed the Paladin Dance character a great deal... my next play through I think I'll play with him more as this one I did Lone Wanderer so didn't use the companions (other than Dogmeat) beyond trying to collect them and sending them to Sanctuary.  Scribe Haylen hates me which is a shame but I have no regrets.  Before I decided to side with the BoS over the Institute I wanted to turn in the Patriot whose identity I had discovered through Underground Undercover but there seems to be no option to do so.  Working through the Institute up to Mass Fusion I also discovered certain key people are Synths, once I picked BoS I wanted to go eliminate them but there doesn't seem to be any way to "out" them.

 

Ultimately I decided on BoS because the Institute seemed too isolationist.  I wish there was an option for them the share their technology with those on the surface (not gen 3 synths, their production should be halted, but their other tech).  I do see gen 3 synths as a threat as they could replace people without anyone knowing (even themselves) and have hidden programming and such.  BoS and the minutemen are trying to make the world a better place.  The Railroad was never really an option for me because as I said I do see gen 3 synths as a threat and they're helping them slip out into the world.

 

The difference between the Minutemen and the BoS in my mind is the Minutemen take the world as it is.  They're trying to make the world a better place for everyone (human, super muntant, goul, synth, whatever) with the BoS is trying to return the human control and see the others as abominations.  For my character I felt that because I was born and lived most of my life pre-war it made more sense that I'd want to return things to human control as I'd never even seen a ghoul or super mutant before I left the vault.  I probably would consider them abominations with that background.  On the other hand if I were born and raised in the post war world where I saw ghouls and super mutants my whole life I'd likely be more inclined to follow the Minuteman route.  Fortunately choosing the BoS didn't alienate the Minutemen so again I'm generally happy with how my game turned out.  There were some very tough decision (which is good) but I don't regret the decisions I made.  The only redo I did via reloading saves was the one before the Defend the Castle because it made no sense to me that defending the Castle from the Institute would fail BoS missions.  At that point I reloaded before that and went all-in on BoS.

 

 

 

 

[johnnyq3]

I in all honesty am giving up on the game until mod support comes out for the console.  I have got the same location to protect from raiders and the same place that has a ghoul problem twice.  The Radiant quest system is nice but I am a bit tired of doing those quests and having to clear out the same 3-4 locations for the same 1-3 settlements that are having trouble.

[+Asmodai MVC]

 

 

26 minutes ago, johnnyq3 said:

I in all honesty am giving up on the game until mod support comes out for the console.  I have got the same location to protect from raiders and the same place that has a ghoul problem twice.  The Radiant quest system is nice but I am a bit tired of doing those quests and having to clear out the same 3-4 locations for the same 1-3 settlements that are having trouble.

First let me say the settlement defense annoyed me as well.  I don't think they are going to fix it though as it's completely optional in the first place.  I just completely ignored every settlement defense mission and eventually they time out and fail and as far as I can tell there is no bad consequence for this happening (other than losing settlers/happiness and such at that settlement).

 

That said if you DO want to defend the settlements then you have to build up the defenses to prevent doing the same thing over and over.  As I understand it there is some sort of equation like:

 

Settlement A gets attacked if Food > Defense.

 

That may not be the exact equation but it's something like that so if you have a settlement with low defense and high food then you ARE going to have to keep defending that same settlement over and over and over again until you raise the defense.  It's not really a radiant quest, it's a different system that repeats because you have a nice juicy target that's largely undefended.

 

If you keep your defense higher than your food (assuming that is the equation, I'm not positive it is) then that settlement should never be attacked other than story related missions.

 

I think there may be radiant quest settlement defense quests in addition to what I've outlined above but those are ones you ask for by talking to Preston.  If you don't want to do them, don't keep talking to him.  This is just like the squire escorts or Cleansing the Commonwealth from Knight Rhys for the Brotherhood of Steel.  Sure they get repetitive if you just do them back to back, over and over, but there's no value in doing that so just do a few here and there when you want.  There are enough sources for the radiant quests that you can mix it up by jumping between different ones to make things less repetitive.  If you keep going to the same source over and over then you only have yourself to blame for the game being repetitive.

[+Asmodai MVC]

On 1/1/2016 at 1:36 PM, _Alexander said:

TLDR: FO4 is cheap and had very little effort put into it. 2/5

Thoughts on: Fallout 4 is not a role playing game

1.  I don't see how a game being fully voiced has anything to do with being a RPG or not.  For example Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition is fully voiced and I don't see how anyone could claim it's not a RPG.  As I get older I find it harder and harder to read pages and pages of text and am thankful to have it actually voiced.  It's not like there isn't a ton of text in Fallout 4 anyway with all the text on the terminals and such if that's your thing.

2.  I agree with this 100%, the dialog system is by far the worst part of the game for me.  The mod to show what you actually say goes a good way toward fixing this but to make matters worse I've seen videos where people show that in many cases at least it doesn't even matter what you pick, the end result of the conversation is always the same.  Creating an illusion of choice was ok years go when the computers weren't capable of but so much branching but now there's really no excuse for that.  If there's no real choice then don't act like there is.

3.  I'm not sure what you mean by not being able to stay in the cult.  You can't just stay there if you wanted to and eat and sleep and do nothing?  I'm not sure why you'd want to do that but I don't see how the game would prevent you from doing it.   If you want to just live in an abandoned building I guess you could do that.  The killing people is a step backwards though.  I'm not the type who plays these games and just runs around killing people but I seem to recall that in Skyrim they made a big deal about the fact you could kill shopkeepers and such and it would generate a new NPC to run the shop.  Maybe I'm mistaken (again I never actually tried) but if that's true then the fact so many characters are unkillable in Fallout 4 is certainly a step backwards.

4.  I'm not sure what you want to do before the bomb drops.  Do you want to play the game for hours where you spend days in game working a 9 to 5 job and coming home to your wife and kid?  I think people would complain about that as well, I certainly wouldn't want to do that.  Maybe they could have the game start on Sat. morning and have you spend the weekend going to a park or something but your child is an infant... should you change diapers for hours and fetch bottles?  Lots of RPGs just tell you what went before for a character then have you jump in and pick up from there.

 

Thoughts on: The world is designed around you and you can tell this fact breaking immersion.

1.  I didn't get this at all.  Preston trusts you because you save their life when you meet them.  They would have been dead if you didn't show up so that makes sense to me.  I didn't get the sense the Brotherhood of Steel or Railroad trusted me at all.  Heck Knight Rhys makes no bones of the fact he doesn't trust you no matter how many "Clearing the Commonwealth" missions you seem to run.  His opinion only seems to go up about you as you get ranks for doing major actions.

2.  I didn't like settlement building overall but I do have to say I was impressed to see people working the crops without me assigning them on some cases and at Sanctuary they put siding up on the houses over the course of the game.  Sure they don't do any major building but I think the developers want it to be a canvas for you not make you go rip down what the NPCs keep building in "your" settlement if it's not something you like. I'm ok with that.

3.  They changed power armor a lot from previous games.  I think overall it's good.  The new take doesn't require training.  I'm ok with that since it's not like the NPCs don't require training but you do.  Power Armor in Fallout 4 is easy to use for everyone.  That's fine with me.  I think it's a well balanced system with the power requirements, different components, damage, etc.  In fact I'd say the worse part is that regular armor doesn't take damage like the power armor parts do.  In my book power armor works better and makes more sense then the normal armor system despite being different from how power armor was in prior games in the series.

5.  Your companions have gear and equipment, they don't come naked, they do consume food, sleep, etc.  You don't HAVE to dress them but you CAN replace what they have with something else if you like.  They don't have to loot ammo because as long as they have one they have unlimited.  I think this goes back to the base being a canvas.  I think it would be more annoying to many if you kept giving people stuff, say you wanted all your companions to be in BoS uniforms because you went all in on BoS and they kept taking them off and putting on a dress or something.  They won't wear/use some things.  Again I think this part is fine.

6.  As for the loot you're probably not the first person to loot most of the thing.  Once you've looted it it's not empty for the rest of the game.  My understanding is that in character terms the concept is that if there's a vacant house someone probably comes through and stashes things there.  Maybe they plan to come back, maybe they die.  So maybe someone looted something, then someone else came along and put something in there, then you came along and looted it, then someone else came along and put something in it, etc. etc.  I haven't really tried in Fallout but in prior Bethesda games you can clear a place out and then wait a week and go clear it out again because things respawn.  That's not a wholly unrealistic mechanic as "people" will tend to move into places that are cleared out.  It's not the same exact loot each time and certain critical items don't respawn (mini nukes, fusion cores, plot items, etc.)

7.  Trading is largely a convenience factor.  It's a pain in the butt to have all your loot in one place and fun trumps realism.  That said the "Provisioners" actually do walk the caravan routes and I've been on many missions where caravan guards are battling the forces in the region so I think a decent effort was made to make it believable.

8.  I'm not sure what exactly isn't self sufficient without you.  Only the settlements if you don't free them and put a beacon calling people they are as well.  They only become non-self sufficient when you take it upon yourself to start drawing in more and more people that the site isn't prepared to support.

9. That's Bethesda's trope, I don't know why you would think this game would have been any different.  That's why they don't make multiplayer games.  You can't make a multiplayer game when you're THE ONE and so is everyone else playing.  If you don't like that then maybe Bethesda games aren't your thing at all.

 

Thoughts on:  Settlement building...

First it's NOT a focus for FO4.  You don't have to do it at all.  It's all kind of on the side for you to play with if you want or just ignore.

That said it annoys me as well.  Every time I got a new settlement I'd try to fix the holes in roofs of existing buildings and such but nothing seems to snap at all to preexisting buildings and in most places (other than Sanctuary) you can't seem to get rid of them.  I finally just gave up and ignored that aspect of the game completely.  I enjoy doing the missions to GET the settlement but I don't do any design on them or help defend them.  Some people DO seem to enjoy that stuff a great deal though so while it's not my thing and I largely agree with your points on it there seem to be plenty of people who think it's just fine.  I'm cool with that.

 

Thoughts on:  Romance

I'm curious what game you think does romance well.  Generally speaking you have an NPC that has things they like and things they dislike.  When the likes add up far enough you can romance them.  The character you are talking about happens to have a like on lock picking.  That's just that one specific character's thing and it's different for other.  You apparently didn't do enough things she disliked and did enough lock picking so the romance option triggered.  If that wasn't your thing just ignore the hitting on or use a different companion.  I don't know what other mechanic they'd use as pretty much every game with romance options I've played does the same thing if it's dynamic otherwise it's prescripted to happen which in my book is even worse.

 

Thoughts on: Game Engine

Lets be clear here.  Elder Scrolls is Bethesda's bread and butter.  They design a new engine for every elder scrolls game.  Fallout is a change of pace between Elder Scrolls games.  As such Fallout uses the engine of the prior Elder Scrolls game.  Fallout 3 used the Oblivion engine and Fallout 4 uses the Skyrim engine.  The Skyrim engine was designed to run on the Xbox 360, as such of course Fallout 4 looks out of date.  Sure they upped the polys on the models, compiled for 64bit from the get go and used higher res textures than the 360 could support since even consoles have 8GB of RAM now but the engine was still fundamentally designed to run on a Xbox 360.  Fallout 5 will run on the Elder Scrolls 6 engine.

Additionally the game was designed for consoles.  Bethesda doesn't design their games for PC anymore, they haven't since Morrowind.  It frustrates me too which is why I finally gave in and got Fallout 4 on PS4 instead of PC because Bethesda treats PC like a console port.  If you play with the Xbox controller on PC it's not too bad but consoles can't run 4k so I doubt much effort was spent to optimize anything for it.  The UI sucks with keyboard/mouse but works fine with a gamepad.

The AI is bad, always has been in Bethesda games.  I'm not sure why you expected anything different.  I take the lone wanderer perk and leave the companions at settlements beause the horrible AI makes them annoying to have around.  I don't think Fallout 4 is any worse than their prior games though.

 

Thoughts on: Other thoughts

I absolutely HATE FPS games but I like Elder Scrolls/Fallout.  From what I've heard from FPS loving friends though they finally got the gun play right so I'm not sure what you're upset about.  I tend to use VATS almost exclusively but my nephew who loves FPS almost never uses it and instead plays it almost entirely like an FPS.  If we can both do that then it seems to me like they got the balance about right.

Most of Bethesda games are a ton of linear stories set in an open world.  You just pick and choose your own combination of which of those linear stories you are going to pick.  The main plot may have a basic choice between 2-4 factions but is otherwise linear.  Skyrim was the same way.

I actually like the lockpicking game.  It only takes a few seconds for me so it's not a big deal.  Hacking on the other hand is a PITA.  I think they consider those mini-games some of the things that define a Fallout game though and I doubt they're likely to change them.

 

I enjoy the game.  I think it's well worth the price of admission but that said I did pick Witcher 3 over it for my game of the year.  I think Skyrim was probably an overall better game that it within Bethesda's own stable but I'd put it ahead of Oblivion and Fallout 3.  I still think Morrowind was the high point of the series though because as a PC gamer that's the last one that focued on my preferred platform.  Since then it's been "simplified" and made more "approachable" for the general masses and targets primarily the console audience.  I wish PC was the focus but even though it's not and Morrowind was the best in my opinion they're still fun games and they're still way better then the low point that was Oblivion and it's ridiculous scaling mechanic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[soniqstylz]

9 hours ago, dragontology said:

Shame though, I like Danse and don't want to let him down a second time (after working for the Institute).

Uuuugghhh I want to spoil that one so hard, but I'll spare you.

 

Quote

8.  I'm not sure what exactly isn't self sufficient without you.  Only the settlements if you don't free them and put a beacon calling people they are as well.  They only become non-self sufficient when you take it upon yourself to start drawing in more and more people that the site isn't prepared to support.

I think he means you have to do all the cleaning, and say if you set up guard towers or clinics, etc., no one will man them until you assign them.  Farming is all they do on their own.

[soniqstylz]

[dragontology]

16 hours ago, soniqstylz said:

Uuuugghhh I want to spoil [the Danse thing] so hard, but I'll spare you.

Relax, I know it. Something like a week or two after the game came out, I had just had the big reveal coming into the Institute thing, so I thought I had it. Wife (who doesn't play Fallout) and I pick up our nephew (12) who has been watching his uncle (my wife's brother) play it on XB1, and he blurts out the Danse reveal. So I'm like, FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU... but he didn't tell me what happens in Blind Betrayal. So I did all that stuff last night and finished the game for the Brotherhood. So I think I know what you wanted to spoil so hard. But seeing it for myself (I mean the drama playing out, not just knowing) it was still great.

 

It sucks because Danse is a total bro... maybe to the point of parodying the whole dudebro genre (e.g. Gears of War), especially with those huge pauldrons... but if you agree with the Brotherhood — and, kinda, why wouldn't you? If you're the male SS, you were a soldier before the war. Brotherhood makes the most sense — he's your best bud. He does hit the Kool-Aid kinda hard, though. If there's a best guy companion in Fallout 4 (besides Dogmeat), I don't know who it is. Danse is a little too brainwashed, Deacon is a greaser hack, Valentine's voice is like nails on chalkboard, and MacCready is a punk. Haven't actually ran with Strong yet. Or the sharp dressed ghoul. So I'm kind of leaning toward MacCready (as you get to know him). Plus, he was in Fo3, even though he was a little punk then, you know, I think it's great you get to see he's grown up and learned so much. And I know you can have Preston Garvey as a companion but... no. Piper wins best female companion. Curie's voice is almost as bad as Valentine's, and Cait keeps complaining about you looking at her arse. I think Cait's arse is almost the new arrow to the knee. That, or complaining about picking up junk, which they all do. (Seriously, was the crafting thing shoved in at the last minute?)

 

Oh yeah. Got a bunch of CTD's trying to get anywhere east of, say, the drive-in, though I didn't go that far south. Quick save anywhere east of that, CTD. West of it, it's fine. So I go into Steam, and this trick really works wonders, and I validate local files. Takes ages, especially on a ~28GB game. Found two corrupt files and fixed 'em. Had to go through setup again, it pegged me for Ultra Quality (yeah, that part), and then it defaulted all my settings. Had to invert Y again, and set the colors. Then I found out it killed half of the realistic dialog mod. Dialog choices are back to being vague, but the mod's framing remains. Decided I don't really care. It's not like the different choices matter. They all come to the same place anyway. Sad realization but it's true. So yeah, if you're getting CTD's — that is, the game just quits on its own and drops you on the desktop — go into Steam, right click on the game, properties, and then local content, I think it's the third tab from the left, then something like check local content. Then go get a sandwich or something. And then, I guess, just check your mods and reapply them. I got one where you can scrap more stuff at settlements, another where you can wear clothes under armor, and those weren't affected.

[soniqstylz]

7 hours ago, dragontology said:

If there's a best guy companion in Fallout 4 (besides Dogmeat), I don't know who it is. Danse is a little too brainwashed, Deacon is a greaser hack, Valentine's voice is like nails on chalkboard, and MacCready is a punk. Haven't actually ran with Strong yet. Or the sharp dressed ghoul. So I'm kind of leaning toward MacCready (as you get to know him). Plus, he was in Fo3, even though he was a little punk then, you know, I think it's great you get to see he's grown up and learned so much. And I know you can have Preston Garvey as a companion but... no. Piper wins best female companion. Curie's voice is almost as bad as Valentine's, and Cait keeps complaining about you looking at her arse. I think Cait's arse is almost the new arrow to the knee. That, or complaining about picking up junk, which they all do. (Seriously, was the crafting thing shoved in at the last minute?)

I like Deacon, he changes outfits everywhere you go (turn your back, new outift).  It's hilarious.  Plus there's a reveal with him as well if you keep him around long enough.  Valentine has the best back story and great missions to go along with it.  Piper's my favorite overall. though.

 

Strong is good only if you pretty much want The Hulk as a companion.

[dragontology]

Right now I'm using Deacon for his perk. I want that sneak bonus. I think I want Danse's as well but I can't recall what it is right now. Danse should be easy to max, since he doesn't have a timer. You can just get in and out of the power armor. As opposed to, say, MacCready, who likes it when you steal, but only once every 20 minutes. So, what you do is, quicksave, then steal. If you don't get caught, quicksave again and then load it. The load resets MacCready's timer. It's a little time consuming, but Killshot is an awesomely OP perk. 95% for any headshot? Mitigated by the fact that railings have invisible walls in between, or at least it seems that way. Like, FFS, I put the bullet between the rails with 6" to spare on both sides, but nope, bounces off an invisible wall. At least, if you queue up more than 2 shots in VATS, you can cancel them. Anyway, I mostly shoot freehand, without VATS, anyway.

 

Mainly using all of them for their perks. After that it's gonna be strictly Dogmeat, and then Lone Wanderer perks. LW/SS and the dog is the best way to go.

[techbeck]

Spectacle Island....wish I had found this place sooner.

[techbeck]

Have like 30 power armor suits now  Most of the are complete.  2 complete set of the x-01 armor and I have one complete set of each type of power armor.  I can start my own army/faction.  I bought a few frames but most are found armor.  Few I stole or targeted an enemies fusion core and took the armor after they left the suit.

[dragontology]

Not a fan of power armor, personally. I don't like the HUD, but I like the way they look. So I might use them as decoration around my bases.

 

Maxed MacCready, and then Deacon. I was lied to about Deacon. Someone thought he gave 20% better sneak. He gives 20% more sneak damage. And that's alright. And 40% longer Stealth Boy usage, but I don't use those. Now I got Preston's perk.

 

Console commands, man... Find your companion, Tilde (~) key, click on them, then "setav CA_affinity 999.00" without the quotes. Then impress them once and you will be idolized. You could probably use 1000.00, but I'm not sure it will pop the final conversation that way. It might, but just to be safe. I was doing the quicksave → load thing with Preston, but building a gun mod only raises it by 7.5, and I figured the couple hours I spent on that was enough.

 

Finished the game for the Brotherhood this past week. Loved the Liberty Prime march. It felt longer than Prime's march in 3. More of the same. He stops and does something that is pretty cool. Not a spoiler but you should experience it for yourself. The assault on the Institute is great. Shot the leader in the face. Felt great. Actually got the kid this time — didn't get him when I beat the game for the Institute. Maybe I was too quick to start over. This time, I just rolled back my save, so now I'm going for the Railroad, without starting over. I just lost 2 and a half hours.

 

Anyone using the mod... I think it's called Spring Cleaning? Lets you really clean up settlements. Like in Sanctuary Hills you can clean up leaf piles, weeds, bushes (not the big hedges though), and more junk, like the boards and bricks littering the road. Vines crawling up walls and such. But man. Be careful with that mod at the manor, the one with the statue thing outside. Because you can take the broken walls... and most of the good walls, and all the floors. And for some reason it has these tiny pits under it that you can get stuck under. So I used floors and rugs to cover it up. Really, I ought to just tear everything down and send all the settlers away. Call that place a loss. Don't suppose there's a way to completely reset a settlement?

 

In better news, the one in the swamp, way to the southeast? I set up the beacon but for some reason didn't think anyone would show. Why would they? The place was a dump. Well, people did and they had no resources and they got attacked. So after fighting off Super Mutants, I had something like 8 settlers with nothing to do. Threw up three of the pre-fab wooden buildings (those things are actually great). Cleared all the bushes. Tore down the house frame around the workbench, and the blown out house. (Again, that Spring Cleaning mod.) Removed the tractor and the vines hanging on it (in that order, they did not fall). Just cleared the whole place out. Put three of those pre-fab wooden shacks on it. Something like six beds in each, along the ground floor. Turrets on the roof, a water purifier in the back. Planted a ton of mutfruit. Put up a couple shops. I think I spent 30-45 minutes on it, and looking at it from a  good ways away after I left, I turned it into a pretty decent little outpost with the most minimal of efforts.

 

Got me thinking. You don't have to be Da Vinci from the start, or even NoRespawns (YouTuber). Find a really basic settlement. I recommend Abernathy Farm, off the top of my head. Because it's got that big open section. The one that's just south of Red Rocket. Link your settlements, then just build a couple buildings. Nothing fancy. Pre-fabs are okay, so is building one from scratch. If you go the latter way, just make a basic 4x6 plot, rectangular house. Wood or metal, don't matter. But you probably have more wood than you know what to do with. Especially if you harvest all the fallen trees. Then furnish it. You need a bed. Give the bed a nightstand. Put a desk there, and a chair. For a kitchen, put a fridge and the cooking station that looks like an oven. Throw a table in front of them for good measure. Then a couch or a couple comfy chairs and a TV. Throw a couple paintings on the wall. Make a few of these. Lay them out differently. Make apartments. Make living quarters as small as you can. For role play purposes, everyone needs a double bed or at least two mattresses next to each other, a couch or two chairs, a TV, a stove, and a fridge. No one uses toilets, sinks, or showers. Skip them. Make apartments, and stack them. Vary the layouts a bit. Oh, a lot of people don't know, but you can assign beds. Think two settlers look cute together? Shove two mattresses side by side in a bedroom and assign them. And they'll always sleep there. Assign all the beds, so when your settlers are done farming, they go to sleep in their apartments down the slope from the farm. Then they wake up and do it all over again. Have fun with settlements you really don't care much about. Wall them up and make sure their defense is north of their total food+water production and they should be fine. (They will still need help with raiders, ghouls, and super mutants, but shouldn't get randomly attacked.) Then, when you start feeling confident, you can tackle the iconic ones, like Red Rocket, Sanctuary, etc.

[soniqstylz]

7 hours ago, dragontology said:

Got me thinking. You don't have to be Da Vinci from the start, or even NoRespawns (YouTuber). Find a really basic settlement. I recommend Abernathy Farm, off the top of my head. Because it's got that big open section. The one that's just south of Red Rocket. Link your settlements, then just build a couple buildings. Nothing fancy. Pre-fabs are okay, so is building one from scratch. If you go the latter way, just make a basic 4x6 plot, rectangular house. Wood or metal, don't matter. But you probably have more wood than you know what to do with. Especially if you harvest all the fallen trees. Then furnish it. You need a bed. Give the bed a nightstand. Put a desk there, and a chair. For a kitchen, put a fridge and the cooking station that looks like an oven. Throw a table in front of them for good measure. Then a couch or a couple comfy chairs and a TV. Throw a couple paintings on the wall. Make a few of these. Lay them out differently. Make apartments. Make living quarters as small as you can. For role play purposes, everyone needs a double bed or at least two mattresses next to each other, a couch or two chairs, a TV, a stove, and a fridge. No one uses toilets, sinks, or showers. Skip them. Make apartments, and stack them. Vary the layouts a bit. Oh, a lot of people don't know, but you can assign beds. Think two settlers look cute together? Shove two mattresses side by side in a bedroom and assign them. And they'll always sleep there. Assign all the beds, so when your settlers are done farming, they go to sleep in their apartments down the slope from the farm. Then they wake up and do it all over again. Have fun with settlements you really don't care much about. Wall them up and make sure their defense is north of their total food+water production and they should be fine. (They will still need help with raiders, ghouls, and super mutants, but shouldn't get randomly attacked.) Then, when you start feeling confident, you can tackle the iconic ones, like Red Rocket, Sanctuary, etc.

 

Or build an AT-AT

 

No but really, here's a few more tips:

 

Build a LVL3 food & drink stand.  Set some seating or a bar next to it, all your settlers will gather around at the end of the day, sitting/standing around chatting.  Codsworth will even comment on it.

 

Spectacle Island is a great place to build a settlement, just outfit your provisioner in a hazmat suit or they'll die on the way back and forth (it's on an island, obviously, and the radiation from the water kills them).  It has a huge vertical build limit, tons of wood and water, a warehouse on one end with a power armor stand, and isn't likely to get attacked by raiders (tho Mirelurks can be a problem).

 

In the Castle, I left the main area open, putting beds in the walls -- and merchant stands next to the bed, so that the merchant is always right next to their bed.  I also outfit my security people (sniper's nest and artillery gunners) in road leathers and armor -- this way I know if you're not in a merchant stand and you're not in armor, you either haven't been assigned somewhere or you're a farmer.

 

Edited January 9, 2016 by soniqstylz

[spaceelf]

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+10+-+64

16.1 beta has the fix for those of us with the flaky compass

[techbeck]

Sanctuary is my default settlement.  I built a 2 story building next to the main building where the workshop is at.  Most of my beds are in there.  All my companions are in Sanctuary as well (cept for Nick).  I have another prefab wood house that has the rest of my beds in it.  Then a section where is like a hangout/bar/restaurant area.