I don't really count the "give me more caps" persuasion stuff because if I'm playing a good guy, I'm not going to try and milk every last cap out of people.  Plus I don't really even need them.  I've played for about a dozen hours and there have only been two memorable persuasion checks, one to convince the old lady to stop doing drugs, and the other actually avoided a combat situation.  I'm underwhelmed.  

Talking to bad guys here is generally a bad idea. Any fight that's part of the story is mandatory with all four options leading to combat, so all that talking first does is place you in the middle of a bunch of enemies when the fight begins. Better off ignoring the opportunity to talk (which will be counterintuitive to many of us) and just start the fight from afar.

I was on the verge of finding The Institute when I realised the game seriously expected me to find scrap to build the plot macguffin first, pacing Bethesda! 

You can build it anywhere including wherever your main stash is. I built mine on the roof of the red rocket truck stop.

Word of praise and a bit of a mea culpa: when the game first came out and I heard there were no more critical hits (sneak attacks and activated VATS crits don't count), I reflexively thought "that's stupid", in hindsight for no other reason because it's such an ingrained game mechanic that it seems weird to go without it. But y'know what, after both playing and thinking about it for a bit, I'm completely turned around. Crits are the stupid - or at least badly antiquated - mechanic.

 

I've argued for a while that one of the most important rules of designing game mechanics ought to be that when you design something to be random, you need to go back and ask yourself "does this need to be random?" I'd argue with the level of simulation in modern games - and by simulation I mean things like location/hitbox detection, dynamic line-of-sight and even ballistics modelling - I don't think the crude tool that is random critical chance is no longer relevant. If you need the outcome of an attack to not be absolutely predictable, just use damage ranges which are an equally old but less stupid mechanic: 2d4 or whatever is still plenty of room for variation. So there's my epiphany, and I'm pleased with how it's working out thus far.

 

On the other hand it does make it utterly baffling that, after ditching the arbitrary randomness of critical hits, Bethesda have seen fit to return random mechanics to skill/conversation checks after the strides made by New Vegas.

 

 

And now for a bit of a tangent: I've been playing a bit of Darkest Dungeon lately which is often described as an RNG-fest, and it's very clear why, and even single actions such as trying to land an attack to cause an enemy to bleed goes through two independent all-or-nothing dice rolls. So in the same vein (no pun intended), it seems more rational to me to suggest that 50% bleed resistance should mean "half damage from all bleed effects" instead of "half chance of taking a full damage bleed, and half chance for nothing whatsoever to happen". So please, game developers, ask yourself that question. Why random?

 

Another game I've recently played, Fire Emblem Awakening, has crits doing *triple* damage, which are almost invariably one-shot mechanics, both to the enemy, including bosses, and to the player's own party members. It's particularly egregious in this game because damage is otherwise completely flat, swing a sword a dozen times and it'll do the exact same amount of damage each time. The existence of critical hits just throws the rest of the game's mechanics out of the window, based on the outcome of a single die roll.

 

On the other hand, another title I think is damaged by its complete lack of randomness is Long Live the Queen, which is purely deterministic and has no random rolls whatsoever. As a result, winning at the game is essentially the result of rote memorisation, or the consultation of a step-by-step walkthrough. You're not anticipating or reacting to some likely weighted occurrence, you just know you need skill level X on week number Y to progress. Imagine if Football Manager was just a case of memorising one certain tactic against each rival team, and if you selected that tactic, you would be guaranteed to win.

Edited December 2, 201510 yr by Humanoid

So should I get this or wait?

Difficult question to answer. The modding toolkit won't be released until Q1 next year, so modders are limited in how far they can go to fix the game. On the other hand, it's probably more complete a game at launch that previous Bethesda titles and is easily played to completion without any real hassle. But then would you have the motivation to start over once the big mods to rival the likes of "Frostfall" in Skyrim are ready?

 

Personally with the benefit of hindsight I might have waited. I'm burned out on the game already, and I'm barely into the double digits in terms of hours played. As a comparison, I picked up Skyrim quite a few months after release when it was a mature, stable product with a large range of mods I could immediately load up on, and perhaps partially as a result, I feel that it continues to be Bethesda's best game and one in which I've easily put in over a hundred hours.

So should I get this or wait?

 

Wait for the inevitable DLC and until all of the major bugs have been patched.  I'd wait until all of the DLC and patches are released, and get the "Game of the Year" or "Complete" edition.

 

It's also a time consideration:  I just do not have the time to keep going back to a game and keep replaying it every time a new DLC comes out.  A lot of DLC add contents at the beginning or in the middle of the adventures, instead of letting you continue to developer your character and the story AFTER the main quest is completed.  Which means, unless you want to waste your time, go back to a game and restart from the beginning, DLC is just a waste of time for people who have already completed the main game.

 

I have hundreds of games on backlog on Steam and GOG.  I want to go through the backlog.  I just do not want to go back to a game that I've already completed because of new DLC.     (I am also a "completionist".  I want to play a game with all the DLC included.  It bothers me when I play a game but miss out on the DLC.  Seriously, game developers should add DLC that extends the story after the main quest instead of dropping new contents at the beginning/in the middle of the game.  Right now, I'm just gonna assume all DLC adds content at the beginning/in the middle because that's how the majority of them are anyway.)

Edited December 2, 201510 yr by ktchong

Being Bethesda DLC, it'll be level scaled to be doable at any level most likely.

I don't get the DLC argument for not buying the game.  It is bloody huge already, there is more than enough content to justify the price.  

The DLC argument comes from the fact that there's a lot of people who will only ever do a single playtrough of a game, no matter how big the game is, and especially for DLC which ties into the base game in some way which Bethesda is quite known for, this means effectively missing content. And even when the DLC works more or less outside the main game, you might want to toy around with the rewards in the main game, but that's not quite as satisfying when you perhaps already have superior gear or have finished most of the main game. Besides, when GOTY of some description comes out, the game will have a lot less bugs and there'll be more community content to fix whatever you might dislike about it. The way games are sold now there's little to no reason to purchase SP games close to release.

 

Personally I only ever purchase purely base games when I know I'll replay them and/or want to support the developer (like Pillars of Eternity)

Edited December 2, 201510 yr by Fenixp

It was like that for New Vegas for me. I've only finished the game once. and that predated any of the DLC. I've since started up to a half a dozen other runs, but aside from one clear of Honest Hearts, I never got around to doing the DLC as my games tended to run out of steam around the time I reach Vegas.

I totally get the bug argument, or even the 'wait for steam sale' argument.  I just think a game with hundreds of hours of content in the base game is not "missing content".

A Return to Capital Wasteland DLC would be cool.

I think a memory lounger DLC is inevitable unfortunately. The memory lounger lady is just sitting there with no lines. 

That would suck.

I don't get the DLC argument for not buying the game.  It is bloody huge already, there is more than enough content to justify the price.

 

An Ultimate edition a few years later is going to be cheaper than the current game, and much cheaper than the current game + all DLC. Not to mention most mods will have been released so installing something like Project Nevada, SkyRe, SPERG, Frostfall or whatever you think will result in a better game for you won't mean having to say goodbye to 30 hours or more of playing.

 

I don't get the DLC argument for not buying the game.  It is bloody huge already, there is more than enough content to justify the price.

An Ultimate edition a few years later is going to be cheaper than the current game, and much cheaper than the current game + all DLC. Not to mention most mods will have been released so installing something like Project Nevada, SkyRe, SPERG, Frostfall or whatever you think will result in a better game for you won't mean having to say goodbye to 30 hours or more of playing.

 

 

Well then why ask the question?  

Edited December 2, 201510 yr by Hurlshot

 

 

I don't get the DLC argument for not buying the game.  It is bloody huge already, there is more than enough content to justify the price.

 

An Ultimate edition a few years later is going to be cheaper than the current game, and much cheaper than the current game + all DLC. Not to mention most mods will have been released so installing something like Project Nevada, SkyRe, SPERG, Frostfall or whatever you think will result in a better game for you won't mean having to say goodbye to 30 hours or more of playing.

 

Well then why ask the question?  

I wanted to get a feel of how good the game currently is.

I have to admit I got caught up in the initial burst of exploring the world, but I've hit this point where I've probably discovered about 70%+ of the various locations and am finding it quite hard to start the game up to play the quests and run through the storyline.  And when I do manage to get the burst of enthusiasm to start playing it again, I find I only manage to play for half an hour to an hour or so. Not the get buried in it and slam through large chunks in any one session type of play.

I killed Maxson for his jacket.

Like every Bethesda game since Daggerfall, I get into it for about 30 hours, then lose interest and struggle to click play.  Then a year or two later I get an urge to play and get a bit more done.

My enthusiasm is waning pretty badly too, dunno if it's just my mood (probably) or the hassle I went through on release but I'm finding it hard to give a crap.  All I know is that when Skyrim was released I played for about 180 hours and loved it, I'm 40 hours into Fallout 4 and wondering how I'll find the time to actually do anything.  I'm thinking I'll just plough my way to the end and come back to it next year.

 

 

I feel like Skyrim was better at being a TES game than Fallout 4 is at being a Fallout game 

I saw the part about Lorenzo Cabot today. the whole quest line about the ancient artifact... man, I think someone at Bethesda wanted to sneak in a few quests from Skyrim, and this is one of them. so out of place... the Fallout universe is getting stupider with each new Bethesda release

Edited December 2, 201510 yr by sorophx

Does anyone know if you lose "friendship points" with your companions if you leave them behind to take another companion with you?

 

I've currently got the reporter, but I'd like to try some of the others I've come across.  I just don't want to suddenly have her lose all interest (thus closing off any potential avenues of dialogue/interaction) if I do.