Fallout 4
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Vorph
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Finishing the Railroad stuff has a pretty major effect on what you want to be wearing for clothing and hat. Unfortunately they half-assed it and left a whole bunch of shit off the list for some arbitrary reason. Even the stuff I'm wearing in that screenshot (vault suit and military cap) had to be modded to work.
kegkilla
The Big Mod
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Rafterman
Molten Core Raider
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Vorph
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Any screenshots I post are Ultra+SweetFX/ReShade.
No idea what they're talking about re: the game looking bad though. There's some inconsistent texture work in a few places, the engine occasionally struggles with LODs, and some of the art itself is fairly shitty (heavy synth armor in particular) but that's about it.
No idea what they're talking about re: the game looking bad though. There's some inconsistent texture work in a few places, the engine occasionally struggles with LODs, and some of the art itself is fairly shitty (heavy synth armor in particular) but that's about it.
So finished my first playthrough.
Ending
Combat
Story
Crafting
Speech / Dialogue
Game changes
Companions
Lockpicking / Hacking
8/10 I'm concerned with quite a few key parts of this game and hope they don't continue down the road they are on. Still had a lot of fun playing through.
Ending
WTF seriously? Epic battle, I chose to eliminate the brotherhood of steel as I sided with the institute. Ok, that last fight was pretty awesome and difficult at parts on very hard. Liberty Prime making a cameo to blow up the airship, pretty awesome in theory. Except you finish the battle, port out and get a tiny glimpse of the fucking thing crashing and blowing up. Should of at least been able to see Liberty doing his thing. He is bad ass after all. So fine, whatever. Most obvious thing happens next, father dies. Ok, completely expected. Then you get treated to the most generic cutscene ever. Bethesda, please go fuck yourself.
Combat
While the FPS parts of the game are much improved there is still much more they need to do in that department. Starters, enemies are still retarded as fuck. I can sit there and pick people off from a distance with impunity and that shouldn't be possible. One shot, two shots, by the third and fourth you should have a good idea where someone is and if someone just stormed in and starts picking off your bros it is unlikely you would return to patrol 20 seconds later like nothing happened. They really need to tighten that up.
Enemies need to use cover better, need to have better access to grenades and npcs should have better defenses (mine fields, smarter turrets etc). They certainly need to react to situations better. Alert status should be much longer, they should also group up and seek you out.
Overall the feel of combat is very improved though. Aiming and firing is much more FPS like and VATS is much better as well. Great improvements there and hopefully they continue to make them.
Enemies need to use cover better, need to have better access to grenades and npcs should have better defenses (mine fields, smarter turrets etc). They certainly need to react to situations better. Alert status should be much longer, they should also group up and seek you out.
Overall the feel of combat is very improved though. Aiming and firing is much more FPS like and VATS is much better as well. Great improvements there and hopefully they continue to make them.
Story
I feel as though the main story was adequate with the exception of the ending. Where this game seriously is lacking are those side stories you traditionally see in Fallout. There are some to be found (most are not voiced and environment related) but given the size of this world and the amount of cities and civilization in them I feel as though the amount of fluff (repeatable worthless shit quests) was very high and the amount of non actual main story content quite low.
I'll touch on the massive world in another part but overall this world is HUGE and pretty empty quest wise compared to other Fallout games. The amount of things you can do in cities like Diamond city that aren't tied to a major portion of the story are pretty anemic in my opinion. There were not nearly enough good side content just in the world that didn't deal with the main story or companions.
There was also a severe lack of decisions in this game as well as consequences to your actions until nearly the very end of the game. New Vegas was great in this and even Fallout 3 was much better in these offerings.
I'll touch on the massive world in another part but overall this world is HUGE and pretty empty quest wise compared to other Fallout games. The amount of things you can do in cities like Diamond city that aren't tied to a major portion of the story are pretty anemic in my opinion. There were not nearly enough good side content just in the world that didn't deal with the main story or companions.
There was also a severe lack of decisions in this game as well as consequences to your actions until nearly the very end of the game. New Vegas was great in this and even Fallout 3 was much better in these offerings.
Crafting
Missed opportunity here. Loot in general was pretty terrible throughout the game. Plentiful and shit would be how I'd describe 99% of it. The crafting system is uninspired to say the least.
Speech / Dialogue
This falls under the "no options or consequences" tab. Seriously, I've never been so disappointed in a fallout game when it comes to dialogue options. I have, zero, absolutely zero reason to go back and playthrough the game as more than a Cha 1 character for speech related reasons. This means they completely failed in that regard to the game.
I don't need to hear my guy talk. I don't need to hear the same barter sequence every time I interact. This grinds my gears because my character really didn't have all that much to say throughout the entire game. Most of all, through almost all of it, what I said didn't fucking matter one bit. They really failed here.
I don't need to hear my guy talk. I don't need to hear the same barter sequence every time I interact. This grinds my gears because my character really didn't have all that much to say throughout the entire game. Most of all, through almost all of it, what I said didn't fucking matter one bit. They really failed here.
Game changes
I really miss a few things from the previous games. Repair was retarded but they could of toned down the decay speed and kept it in so we had something to do with all the damn weapons we find in game. Enemies were shit loot pinatas they could of given a bit more purpose for this tuff.
I miss doctor bags. I don't like random chance on hit for limb damage and being stuck with it for x seconds.
I wish they would nerf the ability to stack DT and be a bullet sponge while making enemies be sponges in the name of "difficulty".
I wish they would make stuff rare. Instead of everyone shitting full suits of armor and multiple guns and ammo when they die.
I wish the would make speech and dialogue mean something again because this game fucking sucked in that regard.
I miss doctor bags. I don't like random chance on hit for limb damage and being stuck with it for x seconds.
I wish they would nerf the ability to stack DT and be a bullet sponge while making enemies be sponges in the name of "difficulty".
I wish they would make stuff rare. Instead of everyone shitting full suits of armor and multiple guns and ammo when they die.
I wish the would make speech and dialogue mean something again because this game fucking sucked in that regard.
Companions
Mixed bag here. I did Nick, Curie, Cogsworth and Piper this playthrough. There are some good stories here. I just wish these people had deeper pasts, more quests with them that advanced their story lines and that those quests had options in them that would impact your relationship instead of trivial shit in game like it is. I would of liked to see the number of companions lowered and the amount of content expanded on because there were some pretty good stories here. They just felt very short and the method to get favor was shitty at best. Another spot where Bethesda really dropped the ball on dialogue and story.
Lockpicking / Hacking
Easier in this game. Hacking is about useless. First, most loot is shit and plentiful. So the few doors you miss because you can't pick the lock aren't worth it. Second, most of the locked terminals don't have any story and some of of the ones that do can be picked up on other terminals that aren't locked. Third, most of the story stuff sucks. Fourth, many of the terminals simply have shipping manifests and arrest records. Shit that doesn't mean anything.
If that isn't bad enough, the terminals that control turrets are most often located in spots that you need to destroy the turrets to get to. Again, mostly worthless.
Lockpicking is usually 100x more valuable than hacking in these games. That said, lockpicking is 10000x more valuable than hacking in Fallout 4. You can skip hacking.
If that isn't bad enough, the terminals that control turrets are most often located in spots that you need to destroy the turrets to get to. Again, mostly worthless.
Lockpicking is usually 100x more valuable than hacking in these games. That said, lockpicking is 10000x more valuable than hacking in Fallout 4. You can skip hacking.
8/10 I'm concerned with quite a few key parts of this game and hope they don't continue down the road they are on. Still had a lot of fun playing through.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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Sort of, what is difficulty exactly?
If you think of combat as a puzzle, and game-play features as tools to solve the puzzle, then scaling damage and health are an excellent way to scale difficulty. I played as a commando gunner (no sneak attacking) on Survival and the game was quite challenging at first in a good way. I had to really make use of chems, food, damage type, terrain and pretty much everything at my disposal. The decrease in damage/increase in health makes it so you have to layer more tools/features on top of one another in order to "solve the puzzle" so to speak. Some things I had to skip over and come back later when I was stronger/better equipped. Combat was never tedious, it couldn't be because I would get splattered to the wall in any kind of prolonged fight.
However, I do agree that the removal of the survival elements minimized their difficulty options greatly. I think that is the main missing part of the game, resources are simply too plentiful and there is no "maintenance" you have to do. The power spikes aren't very even either, which can be a problem, the game jumped from extremely difficult to trivial when I got a two shot combat rifle and a wounding mini-gun.
Vorph
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Difficulty is challenge that maintains some semblance of realism. I'm not expecting Fallout to be ARMA, but I don't want it to be completely cartoonish either. Like I said yesterday though, as far as I'm concerned Survival is "normal" difficulty and everything else is just easy/easier/utterly trivial mode. I would want another difficulty above Survival, but it would need to have different effects besides further increasing enemy damage and decreasing player damage.
Anyway, the first thing I would do to fix game balance is take the nerf bat to legendary effects. Two Shot, Explosive, and Wounding should be reduced to only have a small chance to proc (and Wounding should not stack or affect things that don't actually bleed), or just be removed from the game entirely. Same goes for the Martyr (auto-Jet) effect on armor--needs a long ICD after it triggers and it should last half as long as real Jet or less.
Anyway, the first thing I would do to fix game balance is take the nerf bat to legendary effects. Two Shot, Explosive, and Wounding should be reduced to only have a small chance to proc (and Wounding should not stack or affect things that don't actually bleed), or just be removed from the game entirely. Same goes for the Martyr (auto-Jet) effect on armor--needs a long ICD after it triggers and it should last half as long as real Jet or less.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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I'm convinced the systems design for the Elder Scrolls/Fallout games is done by Todd Howard and other producers. No designer in their right mind would make flat damage modifiers a standard legendary effect, it is just totally nonsensical. Like you said, either a PPM style system or simple a +% modifier would have worked way better. The 2 shot affix it just plain broken, even on fast weapons.
All of this stuff is so obviously broken on its face, and so easily fixed, I don't understand how it gets into the game unless they just bypass (or don't have) a design department for systems.
khalid
Unelected Mod
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Yeah. I mean, who didn't immediate go "wow, thats OP" when they heard about double shot? It isn't exactly hard to realize that a gun effect that double's its damage and doesn't take extra ammo is going to cause balance issues.
Sulrn
Deuces
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Denny, I'm going to have to agree to disagree. Taking longer to kill something you already know you can kill only makes the "puzzle" take longer than it should and adds nothing to the cognitive aspect of the "puzzle". It's one thing to intentionally have enemies drain your resources by design, it's another to decrease player output and call it content. This is reinforced by trying to run non-combat plauthroughs and realizing "the puzzle" only has one answer and the real question is what language you want to say the word in.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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We are specifically talking about combat, so non-combat play-styles aren't really relevant and are a separate issue.
Part of the combat puzzle is how much of a resource you use to solve said puzzle, and if that puzzle is worth the cost. It is also about how you trade off different resources to manipulate the the "worth it" line. Ammo is a resource, chems are a separate resource, but since some chems affect damage psycho can be represented as "use 25% less ammo". If you are flush with psycho and starved for ammo, then it makes sense to spend some of one resource for another. Melee is similar, since melee doesn't use ammo, but you take more damage at melee, you can trade health for ammo. Thus you can trade food, stimpacks, and a little bit of time for ammo as well, augmented with med-x you can cause that trade to also be more efficient.
Ultimately you can also just leave. If the camp/quest is too tough then you should just leave because the pay-off is not worth the cost. This is part of the game, because it isn't an FPS but an sandbox RPG. There is more than enough content that early on there are some things you simply cannot do. Many, many times there were Skulled NPCs at a camp or mission I was on, the solution was obvious, instead of spending time an precious resources grinding out a bullet sponge I simply left and came back later. It worked, that is part of the difficulty.
Now, they also undermine their own difficulty curve in many ways due to poor system design and balance as mentioned previously but manipulating basic stats, especially health & damage, is a perfectly acceptable way to scale difficulty.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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He'll use sledgehammers, maybe only those? Never tried to give him anything else.
I gave him a baseball bat and I didn't see the option to equip it on him. Which maybe its fine because I got a legendary sledge that increases in damage as your DR lowers. Since he's naked maybe he'll hit like a truck. It hits for less than my modded bat.
Sulrn
Deuces
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Was trying to think of an idea of a third run (assuming I ever get to do my Imperial Guardsman turned Space Marine run),
so I could use the Merc/Strong/Institute companions and realized there wasn't really a way of being diabolical levels of evil. Worst you can do is be a greedy, douche that does what's "best" for the Commonwealth.
Am I misremembering or are you tight cast as the good natured or two-sided hero regardless?
Am I misremembering or are you tight cast as the good natured or two-sided hero regardless?
