OFFICIAL Fallout 4 (Discussion)

[newconroer]

Any one get a pretty hefty FPS drop around the USS Constitution? This screenshot is when you enter from the front ground floor building, take an immediate left up the rubble ramp, follow it around up the first flight of stairs and as you reach that landing, this steel section is in front of you.

About the moment you reach the stairtop and face back towards Charlestown, I drop about twenty frames.

?

 

[AlwaysHope]

I've had CTD in dialogue with Virgil and in Corvega assembly plant, a few others in random parts of the world too... hope they bring another official patch for PC.. All this in vanilla game @ 1080P & 60Hz

 

[Disparia]

I've really started to like settlement building now that the main story is done. Did that around the 100 hour mark and since then I've put another 10 hours in, mostly building up existing settlements and finding the few unclaimed ones remaining. Play time will start to taper off (I have other titles to tackle) but by the time the first DLC hits I should have a pretty strong community

 

[Frag_Maniac]

I've really started to like settlement building now that the main story is done.

I just got the game about 2 and a half weeks ago, and have been playing only it lately. I'm playing it opposite of you though. I've been doing mostly radiant quests (until they repeat) and settlement building to level up and prepare for what's ahead. I've only done 2 main quests, a handful of side quests, and dozens of radiant quests, but am already at level 40.

I see lots of people claiming that settlements is a broken feature, with enemies constantly spawning inside the camps and destroying settlers, but I've had no such problems. There are times when I fast travel that Super Mutants or Deathclaws, or a Mirelurk Queen will have just entered camp, but I've yet to see any settlers killed by them.

There seem to be two types of settlement attacks, those that spawn enemies near camps as you travel to them, and those you find out about on Pip Boy or radio when elsewhere. I do what I can to quickly dispatch enemies when they spawn nearby when I show up, but my settlers are also quite effective, and once took out a Deathlcaw quickly by themselves before I could run to a distance and get off a shot.

It also matters a lot how you set up your turrets, walls, and guard posts. Since walling off the side of the camp Super Mutants were attacking at Sunshine Tidings with manned guard towers, I've yet to see any Super Mutants attack. Sure the game has a lot of little quirks in design and bugs, but IMO, it's easily the best FO yet in design and polish.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

I just got the game about 2 and a half weeks ago, and have been playing only it lately. I'm playing it opposite of you though. I've been doing mostly radiant quests (until they repeat) and settlement building to level up and prepare for what's ahead. I've only done 2 main quests, a handful of side quests, and dozens of radiant quests, but am already at level 40.

I see lots of people claiming that settlements is a broken feature, with enemies constantly spawning inside the camps and destroying settlers, but I've had no such problems. There are times when I fast travel that Super Mutants or Deathclaws, or a Mirelurk Queen will have just entered camp, but I've yet to see any settlers killed by them.

There seem to be two types of settlement attacks, those that spawn enemies near camps as you travel to them, and those you find out about on Pip Boy or radio when elsewhere. I do what I can to quickly dispatch enemies when they spawn nearby when I show up, but my settlers are also quite effective, and once took out a Deathlcaw quickly by themselves before I could run to a distance and get off a shot.

It also matters a lot how you set up your turrets, walls, and guard posts. Since walling off the side of the camp Super Mutants were attacking at Sunshine Tidings with manned guard towers, I've yet to see any Super Mutants attack. Sure the game has a lot of little quirks in design and bugs, but IMO, it's easily the best FO yet in design and polish.

Allow me to fill in the blanks for you.

Egret Tours Marina - Don't setup missile turrets, because Radstags spawn/wander directly into the settlement. More than once I was killed after fast travelling because my own turrets decided to blow that Radstag away.
Oberland Station - An absolute mess. Raiders have spawned inside my defensive walls, synths have decided to spawn inside a set of walls I made (literally spawning inside a box the could not leave), and the Supermutants who rarely attack get stuck on the rocks that half the time you can't kill all of them.
Nordhagen Beach - Synths and Raiders actually spawned inside the one indestructible building.
Outpost Zimonja - Raider have spawned in the center of this small place. Talk about a blood bath, when turrets decide that one Raider is worth shooting through half a dozen settlers. So very annoying.
Starlight Drive-in - Both raiders and supermutants spawn in front of the workshop, despite having a fence around the outside of the area. At least the area is so huge that settlers rarely die when the missile turrets decide to finally lock on and shoot them.
Murkwater Construction Site - Sandwiched between a respawning Mirelurk queen and Sentry bot. Throw in the occasional mutant attack, and this place is just frustrating to keep going (constantly breaking turrets is just frustrating, but you need them).

Attacks on settlements are supposed to come in twelve flavors. Bethesda coded for different messages, but it took a mod to enable them. By default you just know a settlement is under attack. With the mod you can determine faction (Mercenaries, Raiders, Supermutants, or Synths) and relative strength (small, medium, or large). As you get to higher levels you can have multiple Raiders in full power armor (though it is just Raider II armor) attack.


Level 40 is the start of this game. When you reach level 60, and the game literally gets to the point where you run out of good perks to take, you should do a fresh evaluation. Talk to me when you've figured our that the medical center loop is just short of being far enough to travel around constantly, so that you can get those blasted microscopes for their fiber optics and nuclear material. The game has content until about level 50. At level 60 things get dull. If you get beyond level 60 you can be assured that the game runs out of steam. Take it from someone who did the same thing as you. At level 60 power armor might as well be tissue paper. The only guns worth using are either lasers or plasma (though the drops on plasma ammo are way too low), and you get to the point where each new perk does something you don't care about.

Take some advice, finish the game before level 60. You'll be happier not getting to the point where the game stops being novel and interesting.



Still waiting to know what is actually in store for the game. Bethesda promised a stream of "free content and expansions" along side their DLC. To date, they've said nothing about any of that, and have been pretty slow on the patching. I'm surprised that between the lack of information, community contact, and a decent editor release that there isn't more pressure from the community to get Bethesda off their mountains of cash.

 

[newconroer]

Dear Bethesda,

I still enjoy Fallout 4 (admittedly with some fine mods to make your default hyped game actually become worth it's cost[arguably]). However I must admit a sin of adultery. You see I still mean to finish Skyrim (also modded), so kudos to that great masterpiece however there is this little cheap game called Savage Lands which feels like Skyrim but at a much more instinctual and primal level.

Therefore my time in Boston has been reduced dramatically by 67% since I washed upon the shore of the Savage Lands.

I hope you understand,

Yours truly,

Devout but wavering Bethesda patriot

 

[Frag_Maniac]

@lilhaselhoffer,
Of those settlements you mentioned, I have all but Egret Tours Marina, and so far they've not been the disaster you've described. I'm also only putting up the lowest level turrets, and never more than 4 in a camp, usually two. It's not hard to predict that missile turrets + Bethesda AI = trouble. And laser turrets take generators, which can require repair at times.

I'm having a lot of fun with just the vanilla version of the game, and I don't plan on leveling too high. I've read some say it starts getting boring at level 45, depends whom you ask I guess. I've been on the Bethesda and Steam forum a lot and every time someone complains about settlements being broken or chaos, others chime in saying they're great, so.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

@lilhaselhoffer,
Of those settlements you mentioned, I have all but Egret Tours Marina, and so far they've not been the disaster you've described. I'm also only putting up the lowest level turrets, and never more than 4 in a camp, usually two. It's not hard to predict that missile turrets + Bethesda AI = trouble. And laser turrets take generators, which can require repair at times.

I'm having a lot of fun with just the vanilla version of the game, and I don't plan on leveling too high. I've read some say it starts getting boring at level 45, depends whom you ask I guess. I've been on the Bethesda and Steam forum a lot and every time someone complains about settlements being broken or chaos, others chime in saying they're great, so.

Let me go at this one more time.

Missile turrets provide the greatest defense, for the relatively cheapest investment of rare components. Oil, gears, and everything else is easier to find that fiber optics and nuclear material. Put simply, to build enough heavy laser turrets you'll need to constantly scrounge microscopes, anything with nuclear material, and make sure that you can link together a metric boat load full of generators.

Why do I need turrets? The settlements function on 10+Charisma for their maximum number of settlers. This means settlements need to have 2*(10+Charisma) defense to not be attacked constantly, unless of course you want to make money off of settlements. If you build a water purifier that produces 40 water, that means you've got to increase the defense by that much. The problem there is settlements have a limit on construction, and turrets break down at random.

So let's say you've got just enough Charisma to do supply lines. That means each settlement has 16 people. The defense rating will have to be 56 (16 food, 40 water) to prevent constant raids. Our turrets each provide 4 defense, so that means I have to build 14 turrets. Each turret requires oil and gears, two relatively difficult to find items. Now, each of those turrets randomly breaks down over time. This means that I've got to go out and harvest more oil and gears to repair the turrets, which cripples both my ability to produce more of them and my ability to build more stuff at the settlement in question. I haven't mentioned it until now, but those pesky build limits mean a place like hangman's alley could reach "full" status before you can build enough turrets to protect it (without using the ability to break things down to decrease the amount of items the game says are there).


So now we have a crappy design choice question. Bethesda has designed the turrets to randomly fail, they've placed a cap on settlement buildings, and they've made the truly powerful defensive options an issue. Do you try and have fun with the settlements, and make some money to make up for the resources they consume in insane quantities? Do you forego settlements, because they're a micromanagement nightmare? Do you install mods to fix all of this broken mess, and use in game "cheats" to make the building reasonable (read: modifying crafting limits by breaking down items manually)?

Here's my truth, Bethesda decided to throw the kitchen sink at this game. Crafting is popular, so they put that into both the guns and the settlements. Fallout 3 had a successful mod that allowed you to build your own home, and so did Skyrim, so Fallout 4 "expanded" upon that by having more potential homes. People like the idea of leveling up, but hate numbers, so the level up system is now based upon perks, that sometimes need to be chosen at certain levels because it's the only way to match the power-up of the enemies that a level increase causes. Bethesda wrote themselves into a corner with the ending of Fallout 3, so this time they wrote an ending that feels hollow so that no matter what choices are made you can walk back into the world and keep grinding.

I'm sorry, but where's the logic? Where's the reason to replay this game a second and third time to be somebody new? In Fallout 3 you could be someone, though it largely came down to good or evil. In New Vegas I could replay that multiple times, and get a new ending each time that felt like my choices mattered, and that I wasn't stuck playing what the developers thought I should be. In Fallout 4 I murder the people I don't like, but the choice is largely which brand of jerk I am. Do I murder the people trying to learn from humanity's mistakes and give us a new future, by kidnapping people in the night? Do I murder the people trying to free what are functionally slaves? Do I murder the people who don't care about the daily lives of the people, just as long as they've got technological superiority? I'm sorry, but after the second ending I felt hollow. I wanted for someone to write a mod, and put the long mile into 4. I'd happily set those nukes to hit the brotherhood and the institute, and that's largely my happy ending.

I've never felt so hollow at the end of an RPG. There was no role to play here. There was the great question of which sociopath I was, and how much niggling crap I was willing to do to level up. Bethesda has produced one of the poorest entries in the Fallout series with 4. Yes, it's more stable. Yes, it includes a lot more contents. The problem is that it's poorly balanced and thought out content, that works to highlight the failures rather than gloss over them. It took me until level 60 to see all of these flaws, because up until then the progression hid the mechanical flaws. When it takes two days of play, and a body count higher that WWII, to level up the progression no longer exists, and it's no longer possible to hide the flaws.

I'm telling you to finish the game before level 60 so you don't see behind the curtain. If you want to ignore that warning, I can't stop you. All I can do is tell you my opinion would be different if I'd stopped there. As it stands now, I can't help but feel that Fallout 4 is technically better than 3 and New Vegas, yet hasn't enough soul to truly be comparable. Maybe the DLC will fix that, but what I'm actually hoping for is another Obsidian joint, that allows us to have the heart of New Vegas, the quirkiness of Fallout 3, but the improvements and stability of Fallout 4. I likely won't get it, but I can dream.

 

[Jborg]

I lost all interest in the game around level 60.... 120 hours of gameplay I had the game uninstalled.

The lack of building options in the game disappointed me. Especially seeing as how modders were able to add all the extra stuff in so easy.

For example, the walls at covenant are available to use everywhere else, along with some preset houses with this construction mod

My fav add-on mod for settlements was one that added ROBOTS to your settlements defense.

I had a good list of other mods I was using, and while it seemed to really improve the game, I still felt unaccomplished when I finished.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Look, I know some are disgruntled with the game, but again, I'm not having such problems, and I need no lessons on how to play it. I've put as minimal resources into the settlements I have as possible, so yes, I have TONS of resources stored in my workstation library, and know full well by now which defenses require them.

As far as the stats numbers you're feeding me, I've yet to see one person obsessed with preaching game code stats manage to come up with a gameplay system that suits them, so I don't really get your implying it's ME that needs a tutorial. Others go by testing in game what works best for them. It's the ones preaching what the game code says that imply you don't need to have your defense stat = to food + water, yet they say they always have to be there when settlements get attack, or lots of settlers get killed.

If and when the claimed settlement chaos starts, I'll be ready to deal with it, but thus far, I have about 120 hours into the game, and it's been very fun for me. Sorry it hasn't been for some of you, but I didn't come here looking to jump on anyone's rant wagon, and I play it my way, and my way is working fine. I don't go by game code stats or formulas, I go by what works for me in gameplay.

The way I look at it, even if settlers start dropping like flies, with the beacons in place, and so many generic no name settlers the game spawns, life in the common wealth will still chug on. I see no need to throw fits about how it does, since I feel the core gameplay is quite an improvement over FO3.

Hope your next game doesn't disappoint you so much.

 

[Ahhzz]

@Frag Maniac , there's a mod out there that gives you a better alert (popup, you have to click it to continue) when one of the settlements is attacked. I think that more than anything, that makes it so that you really don't have to sweat much more than the basic support. Also, the new patch apparently lets you know your Settler Status, so you can tell who's farming, who's defense, and who's just lollygagging

 

[Frag_Maniac]

@Frag Maniac , there's a mod out there that gives you a better alert (popup, you have to click it to continue) when one of the settlements is attacked. I think that more than anything, that makes it so that you really don't have to sweat much more than the basic support. Also, the new patch apparently lets you know your Settler Status, so you can tell who's farming, who's defense, and who's just lollygagging

I'm planning to use zero player made mods this first play through. Hell, I've only used two very minor weapon mods, because I've found since weapons level as the player does, damage modded weapons become a waste of time. I was going to mod a suppressor onto a sniper rifle I found at one point, but then found one with a suppressor on it. I've also not bought or sold anything. I'm playing just on Normal my first run, and there are way more pickups than needed really.

I'm also well aware that the latest patch denotes what assignments settlers have. I may even know some tidbits you guys don't. This thread's been idle for some time, but I've been on the official and Steam forums of the game daily.

I pretty much stopped responding to settlement attack alerts, because when I get there, no one's been killed. They're just an unnecessary repeat gameplay feature, like radiant quests become once you've looped through all of them. I have found one of the key things to enjoying the game is recognizing redundant features early on, and ignoring them.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Look, I know some are disgruntled with the game, but again, I'm not having such problems, and I need no lessons on how to play it. I've put as minimal resources into the settlements I have as possible, so yes, I have TONS of resources stored in my workstation library, and know full well by now which defenses require them.

As far as the stats numbers you're feeding me, I've yet to see one person obsessed with preaching game code stats manage to come up with a gameplay system that suits them, so I don't really get your implying it's ME that needs a tutorial. Others go by testing in game what works best for them. It's the ones preaching what the game code says that imply you don't need to have your defense stat = to food + water, yet they say they always have to be there when settlements get attack, or lots of settlers get killed.

If and when the claimed settlement chaos starts, I'll be ready to deal with it, but thus far, I have about 120 hours into the game, and it's been very fun for me. Sorry it hasn't been for some of you, but I didn't come here looking to jump on anyone's rant wagon, and I play it my way, and my way is working fine. I don't go by game code stats or formulas, I go by what works for me in gameplay.

The way I look at it, even if settlers start dropping like flies, with the beacons in place, and so many generic no name settlers the game spawns, life in the common wealth will still chug on. I see no need to throw fits about how it does, since I feel the core gameplay is quite an improvement over FO3.

Hope your next game doesn't disappoint you so much.

Allow me to point you to the very game that you are playing, and ask you if you've paid any attention to the, very limited, tutorials?


Now that you've answered, allow me to tell you why I asked. If you paid attention to the settlement tutorial, you'd know that they state, flat out, that you need to have your defenses equal to the sum of your water and food. This isn't me breaking into the code, it's covering the basic tutorial that Bethesda saw fit to include. If you'd like to tell me otherwise, perhaps you should ask why the people who developed the game included it.

As far as not needing tutorials on how to play, you started the conversation. You said that people were claiming that the settlement were "a broken feature." You then said they weren't. Either there's some language gap I can't identify, or you received an explanation of why they were broken to counter your claim that they weren't. If I said "AMD processors suck," I'd expect a bunch of people who liked AMD to come to its defense.



As far as rants, yeah. I have them, because countering you with "you are wrong" doesn't further a discussion. It's basically flame bait. Spending the effort to explain why you're wrong is how you prove a point. I'm not sure when exactly discourse devolved into "yeah huh" and "nuh-uh," but if you'd like to argue out your point then I'm expecting something more than "I'm right because."

As far as following the forums from Bethesda, I'm laughing at that rather heartily. Their forums, in my experience, were more poorly managed than this website. Now that's a relatively easy bar to be lower than, but game company forums aren't exactly where information pops out like candy. Heck, the Nexus does a better job cataloging issues than Bethesda. I'll be glad to admit I don't know what I'm talking about, when you can demonstrate consistency in logic. At one moment, it's just me being "butt-hurt," while in the next I'm supposed to ignore parts of the game because it's a time sink. By that logic, the perfect game for you is Tetris. There's no element that's a time sink, the thing is fully fleshed out, and the only time people complain is whenever it's utterly broken.


Why are you even commenting? Could it be that you are defending something you like? Perhaps it could be investment, and actually wanting to see the thing succeed? Perhaps the reason you are so harsh is that a company that makes the money Bethesda did should be held to high standards, because previous releases proved they were capable of meeting those standards? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you judge the latest NFL and FIFA games the same way as Fallout 4, and each yearly release doesn't need to be better. I can't speak to your logic, but I know that I expect more from my games. If I didn't, Fallout 4 would be objectively better than 3 because it includes crafting; never mind that it basically just took the New Vegas system and tweaked it so that it actually requires more resources but less money.

Never mind the lack of ammunition crafting. Never mind the lack of weapons balance, or the lack a reasonable progression past level 60. Don't pay attention to the fact that they managed to make a role playing game dependent upon farming random loot drops to get legendary modifiers. No, none of that matters. Fallout 4 is better because it doesn't crash as much.

What an utterly depressing standard to have. I am hard on what I love, because that's the surest way to improve it. The modding community has already proven that, and they've proven they're more dedicated to the games than Bethesda. Despite this, Bethesda tried to make paid mods, and they saw fit to make less effort to get their game running than modders (who've found and fixed more of the game via an unsupported modding system than Bethesda has fixed with official patches). I'm hard on Bethesda, because they expect us to fix their mistakes. That's unacceptable. Despite this, people see fit to praise them. If you just want to accept whatever they see fit to selling, I'd suggest you go to EA. I'm sure they'll sell you something that's been homogenized beyond recognition, so that it's an inoffensive and soulless experience. Me, I'll tolerate crashing and bugs to be lord stabby, then be a sniper, then be a running explosive dispensary. Fallout 4 in technically better, but I am disappointed because it lost its soul on the way to being better.

 

[Jborg]

Never mind the lack of ammunition crafting. Never mind the lack of weapons balance, or the lack a reasonable progression past level 60. Don't pay attention to the fact that they managed to make a role playing game dependent upon farming random loot drops to get legendary modifiers.

Funny enough, after the game was out for 2 months they had some good mods that fixed all those issues you mention here.

That makes me ask myself.... How easily could they have released small patches to add these improvements that modders were able to create relatively easily. But we all know this isn't the first time around this has happened , and I have a feeling its not going to be the last from Bethesda.

 

[erocker]

Funny enough, after the game was out for 2 months they had some good mods that fixed all those issues you mention here.

That makes me ask myself.... How easily could they have released small patches to add these improvements that modders were able to create relatively easily. But we all know this isn't the first time around this has happened , and I have a feeling its not going to be the last from Bethesda.

Lol, the modders are their free labor!

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Lil, I was referring to your extensive preaching about Charisma, not Food + Water = Defense. And I can't get into reading your walls of text when you continue to act is if I know nothing about the game. You don't get to level 43 in under 120 hours played with no such described settlement chaos without knowing a fair bit about how to play it. And it's not just me debunking the settlements are broken claims. I've seen threads on the official forum of guys that have finished the game and leveled to 60 to 70, with no such problems.

If you refuse to enjoy the game and are going to be stubbornly insistent it's not worth playing, I can't do much about that, but I can sure as hell avoid being influenced by a lot of crap I have no reason yet to believe is a problem, especially when others whom have gone a lot farther than I have say the same.

It's not the game for you, I get that, but I also think someone as biased and angry as you are about it, whom doesn't seem to listen to anything but like comments, is a good one to be preaching tutorials about how to play it, or even what's wrong with it.

 

[Mussels]

actually i've had very few settlement attacks and i have charisma 10, so charisma definitely ties into the attacks somehow.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

actually i've had very few settlement attacks and i have charisma 10, so charisma definitely ties into the attacks somehow.

I only have Charisma 6 though, just to get Local Leader, and I've not really had an excessive amount of attacks either, and certainly no disastrous results when they do occur. So I can't say I agree.

I know Bethesda has that vague defense guide, but many argue it's not reliable enough to use. I'm just saying making decisions on common sense and what you see in the game, makes more sense than going by set formulas.

 

[Mussels]

if you can stop arguing about who's having the least fun, catalyst 16.1.1 betas are out with crossfire fixes for Fo4.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Oh I'm done arguing with him. It's been very one sided since he started in with his hate diatribe anyway, and as I said, he assumes far too much about my knowledge of the game.

And yes, I'm already using that driver. I've been away for a while guys, but I'm not exactly out of the loop. LOL

 

[brandonwh64]

Dude we get it.... You don't like the game.. Why troll this tread with your devil worshiping speeches?

 

[Tatty_Two]

Thread cleansed of the tit for tat, back and forth derailment that requires more patience than I currently have, everyone is encouraged to have their opinions, lets just not beat the whole thread up over them please.

 

[Ahhzz]

Come on. It's the longest thread that I've started. Do we really have to have it locked because of a stupid "He started it!!!" mess? Let's just get back to the game. Both of you grow up and put each other on your ignore lists. This is not the place to prove yourselves.

Has anyone heard anything solid at all about the Construction set release? I know there are tons out there developing mods via brute force: I'd really like to see what they can come up with give a proper tool set...

 

[Tatty_Two]

I appreciate your trying to clean things up, but quite frankly, the caustic behavior was solely lilhasselhoffers, and you left some major messes he's posted uncleaned.

If you're going to see fit to remove my posts merely for arguing against his hostility in a civil manner, even having tried politely to tone him down in the process, and leave ones with this level of hostility, I have no choice but to put him on my ignore list.

Furthermore another member jumped in and recognized that HE was the only one being hostile, and was thanked by another for doing so.

Seems you too can't let it go, more so than he, so you thought you would continue by posting this here after I have asked you both not to, so why did you not message me? Since you want to pass comment publically........ It looks like a deliberate attempt to continue the issue after being warned not to, so whilst I am not arguing with most of your points you have solely managed to continue the crap in this thread since I posted. Firstly, I actually only removed one of your posts? I moderated since Mussels asked you all to play nice, so when I stepped in my primary concern was not earlier posts prior to his comments but a blatant disregard of his request (to stop arguing?), I find it amusing quite frankly that you have moved from the moral high ground (I agree) to the complete opposite and made a clear decision to post again here and further derail the thread. Also, please don't assume that because moderators don't publically discuss any action they may have, or choose to take against any member as an indication of whether they do or have.

So the fun ends here, I have further removed some posts, including yours I part quote here, anymore derail from anyone will result in a holiday..... a long one at that.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

It was never my intention to derail this thread in resurrecting it from weeks of idleness. I tried more than once to calm things down. The only reason for my last post is it appeared I was being treated as equally hostile. Thank you for clarifying otherwise.

If it happens again, next time I'll PM you as suggested.