Fallout 4 is coming soon.. is there a new OB Fallout Scheduled?

[Longknife]

How viable is it to just ditch companions and go at it solo? I generally prefer the sneaky approach and Bethesda's AI generally deals with it badly (and reading this thread doesn't give me particularly much hope that it's improved quite enough yet..)

 

 

From what I've read, solo play might damned well be superior.

 

There seems to be a bit of a problem in regards to armor and damage resistance. One guy noted that a fancy suit of Combat armor may give you 250 armor rating while a suit of power armor gives you well over 1000. The result is that the difference between being naked and wearing combat armor is about 15% damage reduction, whereas the power armor is either at 80% or touching on it. Kinda lame and means many armor choices are more or less aesthetic.

 

 

Lone Wanderer, the perk which provides benefits to you when you travel alone, seems to give a flat damage reduction bonus if you lack companions. This means that a naked character with Lone Wanderer will actually have superior damage resistance than a character in full combat armor. It also makes it so that at least 45% damage reduction is possible without power armor. Top this off with all the complaints about companion AI and I don't think you're missing much.

 

Simultaneously, if companion perks are indeed permanent once unlocked, Lone Wanderer remains on if you travel with Dogmeat. This means you can farm all the companion perks and then take Dogmeat, and viola you OP.

Edited November 19, 2015 by Longknife

[HoonDing]

Damage reduction is based on weapon damage.

For instance 1,000 armour rating with power armour reduces ~50% of 1,000 mini nuke damage.

 

And I'm pretty sure certain attacks like poison/acid and deathclaw attacks are always full damage even in power armour.

Edited November 19, 2015 by HoonDing

[Hurlshort]

Well I love that strolling around in a business suit is not that insane.  But honestly that isn't much different than the last two games.  The only big difference is the customization of everything.

[Raithe]

There is something to be said for casually strolling around in that Silver Shroud outfit. It's very stylish for the wasteland.

[Lexx]

I had vacation the past few days and wasn't home. So I had the chance to play Fo4... now my two cents:

The gunplay is really good now, though sometimes a tad too fast for my taste. Enemies just run up and clog around you. The weapon customization is kinda cool, but I hate how most of the weapons look like. Especially the partial steampunk influences (assault rifle looks like out of WW1). On the other hand, they fixed their remake of the combat shotgun, and now with weapon mods you can even make it look nearly like the classic combat shotgun. Only needs a bullpup design and it'd be my most used weapon... anyway, didn't stop me from creating my own version: The Ghetto-Blaster. It's the remote relative of the City-Killer.

I even don't mind the power armor gameplay. Sure power armor can be found in every closet now, but it fits the Boston setting and it's nice to find a random armor part you didn't got anywhere else yet. Though, the level-scaling of the armor is annoying. I had to grind up to lvl 28 just to get the Enclave armor...

In the end, Fallout 4 is exactly what I've expected: Pretty much Fallout 3 all over again. I just hate the world- and quest-design that Bethesda delivers. And oh god, all the random fetch and kill quests. And the dialogue (if you get some, there aren't that many) which changes from mediocre to awful all the time (especially the emotional scenes... they make me want to bite the keyboard). And once again I really don't feel motivated to explore the open world. This is because of two things: 1. I am not much a fan of such open world games. I need a story to occupy me and give a sense to the exploration. Randomly walking around is - most of the time - really not my thing and 2. there is really nothing that feels rewarding to me. It's random level-scaled loot. Stimpaks, Rad Away, Buffout (I have so much Buffout by now), ammo everywhere and sometimes a rare item drop from a legendary critter. It's all level-scaled, though, so why even bother...

The dialogue system is just awful and I am not even talking about the dialogue wheel or the very little / not existing choice&consequence. Sometimes NPCs just seem unresponsive or it takes long until the dialogue even starts. I've also had NPCs start talking to me while I was busy walking somwhere, which then cancled the dialogue, which then results in the NPC spouting some angry comment about me just walking away. Oh... and while Bethesda scrapped skills, they could as well just remove the dialogue options. Most of the time they matter nothing anyway. And then they could also remove the perks, because they feel totally useless to me. Took the lockpick and hacking ones first, and then randomly some other ones, like local leader (because I needed it for advanced settlement stuff). Everything else... I either don't feel it or I don't need it.

Also it looks like Bethesda did various fan-service things. Like the now again skin-tight vault suits, the Brotherhoof of Steel who are now a little more like the original again, the vaults which aren't all social experiments anymore (this was dumb anyway, even already in Fo2) and stuff like the super mutants who are green again and not *that* dumb (Though, it's highly annoying they appear again to begin with.... It's like everyone and their mothers got access to the FE-Virus now and ofc everyone tried to create their own super soldiers who then turned out to be the same looking super mutants. Meh.) There is more, but I kinda forgot about that right now. Still it's kinda a good thing. At least they try.

 

/Edit: Totally forgot about that... nobody has mentioned it before: Generic clothes seem to be "genderless" again! If my dude feels the need to wear a fancy dress, now he actually *can* do it. The last time this worked in a Bethesda game must have been Morrowind. Everything after that always had the clothes switching from male to female variants, depending on who was wearing them.


tl;dr: All in all, I see why people have fun with this game, just as I can see why Fallout 3 appeals to so many. For me, the whole game design simply isn't my cup of tea, though.


Oh, one more thing! The whole time while playing this game, I really couldn't stop thinking about how awesome it would be to play New Vegas with this graphic and gunplay upgrade. Also wouldn't mind getting parts of the power armor gameplay into New Vegas (the whole get-into-that-thing animation stuff, feeling real powerful, etc). Damn, I'd totally buy that game again.

Edited November 19, 2015 by Lexx

[Gorgon]

My google skills are failing me. I've been trying to find the soundtrack (not the radio, the background music when you are creeping around the wasteland) 

Some of it is original and there is a sortof bladerunnery keyboard score I think I've heard before. It's location specific I think. 

 

Can you dig any of that out of a folder and convert it ?.

[Gorgon]

Borderlands 2 is that where I remember it from ?

 

What's the name of that app that will recognise a song from a small sample. 

[Gfted1]

What's the name of that app that will recognise a song from a small sample.

 

Shazam

[Gorgon]

I think dogmeat is the only sensible one for any stealth type play. The rest tend to make it quite awkward if you try to be sneaky in more than a general cautious manner.

You can just park your companion at the entrance and do your stealth thing. Of course it kinda defeats the purpose, but what are you gonna do if you happen to be romancing a cyborg. 

[WDeranged]

My google skills are failing me. I've been trying to find the soundtrack (not the radio, the background music when you are creeping around the wasteland) 

Some of it is original and there is a sortof bladerunnery keyboard score I think I've heard before. It's location specific I think. 

 

Can you dig any of that out of a folder and convert it ?.

 

You could get the archive extractor and have a look for the files but I dunno what format they'll be in.

[Humanoid]

By the time the game finished installing I only could play about an hour last night. Which wasn't enough time to even leave the house, because I spent pretty much the whole hour messing with character creation - though to be fair it wasn't all on one character at least. God I wish they'd shut up though, the comments they both make every time you make a tiny change was cute for about thirty seconds.

 

Anyway the UI for it kind of sucks and is a weird mish-mash of keyboard and mouse controls, but I'm happy with the scope of changes you can actually make. Being able to use the whole screen is an obvious improvement versus Skyrim's half-screen and FO3/NV's one-tenth-screen, and the lighting is neutral so there are no tricks of the light. It's a little worse than Skyrim at providing an accurate expectation of what you look like once you get into the gameworld proper, but I guess it's sort of inevitable given that they at least attempt to animate some facial expressions this time around, versus the perpetually neutral mask of the Skyrim player character.

 

So yeah, that's my entirely superficial first-look at the game. Maybe tonight I can get some actual gameplay done.

[HoonDing]

Oh, one more thing! The whole time while playing this game, I really couldn't stop thinking about how awesome it would be to play New Vegas with this graphic and gunplay upgrade. Also wouldn't mind getting parts of the power armor gameplay into New Vegas (the whole get-into-that-thing animation stuff, feeling real powerful, etc). Damn, I'd totally buy that game again.

You didn't buy FO4?

[Lexx]

This line was about New Vegas. If I could get a version with Fo4 graphics and gunplay, I would play the same amount of money again. It's simply the better game and would be totally worth it.

 

Also I did not buy Fo4. Not going to waste money on this mediocre game I don't really like. Played it a while on a relatives PC. Thought I could play through it in a couple of days, but didn't succeeded. Think I got to lvl 30 and into the institute, then my time (and motivation anyway) was over.

 

What I did now was fixing and updating all my New Vegas mods and starting a new game. Feels good. New Vegas sure as hell isn't perfect, but it sure as hell is the much better rpg and Fallout experience.

[Darkpriest]

Bought it for dota 2 announcer pack, refunded. ez, wont waste money on a trash game. If I want FPS i still have recen Wolfenstein or the upcoming Doom.

[trulez]

Bought it for dota 2 announcer pack, refunded. ez, wont waste money on a trash game. If I want FPS i still have recen Wolfenstein or the upcoming Doom.

Wait, what?

You're being proud of the fact that you stole some promotional goodies, am I reading this correctly?

[HoonDing]

So when it's Christmas, decorations appear in Diamond City.

I haven't seen anything like this in a game since Shenmue.

[eLPuSHeR]

Despite all the legit criticism I am still enjoying F4 a lot. And yesterday one random battle made me chuckle. I was travelling through the wasteland (I am level 28 now I think) while I heard the sound of some vertibirds. A BOS airborne detachment was initiating an assault to a mutan infested location. I lent them a hand but despite my efforts, a knight died after all mutants were dead by engaging a boafly. LOL.

 

*** SPOILERS BELOW

 

 

The only thing I don't like at all is that it seems there isn't any way to end the game via a diplomatic/pacifistic approach. There are no moral shades of gray here. Just black and white views. All factions seem to be quite Nazi-like even if they all have their valid points.

 

[HoonDing]

Energy weapons are really OP compared to small guns.

 

Laser rifles suck but plasma weapons and Gauss rifle are ridiculous even without science upgrades.

[Humanoid]

Not the best first impression the game could have given me:

 

 

Okay, so I goofed and spent all my minigun ammo trying to snipe raiders from the roof. I took it that trying to take out the deathclaw with my puny small arms might be somewhat challenging, so in typical fashion the most expedient way to take it out is to exploit classic Bethesda AI. The whole time here, the deathclaw is charging headfirst into the wall while I plink away at its tail. I mean, rationally I would just choose to slink away and not engage the thing, but thou must.

[eLPuSHeR]

Energy weapons are really OP compared to small guns.

 

Laser rifles suck but plasma weapons and Gauss rifle are ridiculous even without science upgrades.

I still haven't got my hands on any of these but If I am not mistaken Gauss Rifle is not an energy weapon (at least it wasn't in Fallout 2/3). I have a gamma pistol though. I think it does radiation damage, so pretty useless against ghouls I guess.

[Lexx]

This article is very true.

Edited November 20, 2015 by Lexx

[Raithe]

Well I found myself spending more time wandering the northern side of the map rather than pushing the main quest onwards.

 

I reached the point where I should be handing a cigar to dogmeat to smell, but I got side-tracked trying to work through the growing list of quests I'd already picked up....

Now looking at my stats I see I've discovered 168 locations..  And that after 62 days of wandering the wasteland my completed Quests is 46 and breaks down into 25 miscellaneous objectives, 3 completed main quests, 18 completed side quests, 10 BoS quests and 13 Minuteman quests....

 

Companion-wise, I've found: MacCready (a former lost lamplighter kid from FO3 turned sniper/hired gun), Curie (the French medical droid), Caite (the fighting irish lass), Valentine (synth pulp noir detective), Piper (roving troubleseeking reporter), Codsworth (your former house mr handy), and Dogmeat of course. 

 

Technically, Preston should be available, but for some reason he only gives missions, talks when you're handing them in, and won't actually show up a "join me" option when I try talking to him.

[HoonDing]

That's a thing that bugs me, after 200 years there are still people with Russian and Scottish/Irish accents. I realize Boston has a big Irish community in real life, but in the game it's nothing but a hellhole fought over by mutants, raiders and gunners.

I even found a random raider taunting me in Danish/Swedish in the southern part of the map.

[Rosbjerg]

Yep that was really silly.. At least have a minor russian, Irish settlement etc, ain't that hard to explain.

 

In fact, explain much much more.. What is the commonwealth? What is the Brotherhood? What are the Minute Men? I had to look it up online, none of the characters in game would explain the setting/lore.. Now most of those I could figure out or guess, but maybe my 2 INT character can't.

 

Mild spoiler:

And in that vain Paladin Danse kinda pissed me off.. "what we are should be self evident"... erh no. You're a new group here, remember?

[Hurlshort]

I thought the Russian accents were out of place, but I'm enjoying the Boston accents.