What we want from Fallout 4 - @ PC Gamer

Dhruin

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PC Gamer lays out their ideas to improve Fallout 4:
Make it about survival. In Bethesda’s hands, the Wasteland is fun. By the middle of a run through you’re clobbering Deathclaws with concrete capped rebars and sipping irradiated water without a care in the world. Possibly with a pinkie out. The point being is that the notion of survival becomes obsolete in a world dripped in caps to find, traders to sell to, and junk to collect. New Vegas has hardcore mode, forcing you to think about food, water, and rest, as well as altering the way meds and stimpaks work, but it’s still a world that can easily and comfortably be lived in. It needn’t be the main difficulty level, but the option to make the world a harsh place to live, to make the players think about every move, not just their weapon and perk choices, would give the ashy flavour of survival.
More information.
 
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Just barely surviving for hours on end… sounds like loads of fun. :-/

Personally I prefer games that are about bigger issues than just staying alive.
 
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The article is exactly right. The biggest negative in FO3 for many people was how pathetically easy it is. That's why so many mods focused on making the game more challenging.

There's nothing fun about hitting the level cap and maxing out your stats halfway through the game. Not to mention money and ammo were far too easy to stockpile.
 
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I don't think I could go back and play Fallout 3 without hunger and thirst mods. That's what a post apocalyptic setting is all about, struggling to survive in a harsh environment after the collapse of civilization.
 
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Fallout 3 was a bit unbalanced. Fallout: NV did a much better job.

That said; no matter how oldschool I am, I never found a water system that I considered fun. If I go back to games like Black Crypt, Water was pretty much about finding and clicking fountains once in awhile, but it was a rather pointless as a game mechanic. Consider instead "vitae" (blood) in Vampire: The Masquerade. Vitae is interesting since you must hunt it and you can use it. Consider "mana". Mana is interesting, yet again because you can use it. Consider "food" in Fallout NV; food actually give more than just saturation. But the only "water" system I have ever seen in games have been a dropping numerical value that needs an occasional refill and that's it. It gets tedious quickly and as far as I concern it only derails the game. It's not realistic either because when the clock go by as fast as it does you drink much more in player time than you do in reality but actually drinking and acquiring the stuff takes the same amount of time as in reality. That way you end up feeling you have to drink all the time.
 
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I get that people are cool with the idea, and I'm down with a little survival in my Fallout. However, neither of the originals really focused on this idea, and you can balance out leveling and progression without adding more comprehensive survival elements into the mix.
 
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I get that people are cool with the idea, and I'm down with a little survival in my Fallout. However, neither of the originals really focused on this idea, and you can balance out leveling and progression without adding more comprehensive survival elements into the mix.

The bit that really stretched it for me was Dead Money. That was brutal. You really had to get by with what you got and if you got in there with low level you would get smacked hard with no way to get out.
 
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Survivalism is a one-trick pony you can trot out only so many times. That's why New Vegas shined; it took the story forward from the really desolate ages back in Fallout 1. I think that's a pretty flawed desire on PC Gamer's behalf. If they keep remaking Fallout 1 again and again, it'll get old and kill the franchise (or make it popular and turn it into Call of Duty or Madden, but perish the though).

There's more ways to handle "survivalism" than just dealing the rubble of apocalypse.
 
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I think if you try to mix in too many game elements, the works get gummed up quickly and you wind up with an unfocused mish-mash. Combat, trading, leveling, quests, exploring, survival, where is the focus? Unless you have a very well balanced story and game mechanics and resources, you're going to have a very flawed game. Tricky balancing act for sure.
 
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I'd be happy with just a better combat system, I never really liked combat in FO 3, although it seemed a little more tolerable in NV. It didn't seem like the psuedo turn based mode or the real time mode was really fleshed out enough to be fun. For me I would have liked it better if they had focused on one good system rather then 2 mediocre ones, but I know some people liked it better then I did.
 
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I'd really like more survival aspects, finding food and water should feel like finding treasures. Finding a good balance between annoying and fun can be hard though.

I still want Beth to develop it though, they handle both design and freedom really well, and they get better with every game too.
 
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Well I play with a customized version of Arwen's mod and I love having to work to survive. The setting certainly calls for it.
 
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The article misses a point, a big one: Skyrim.

Skyrim was a huge effort to try to give survival a meaning, with food, sleep being given meaning. Food was not supposed to be that half boosting system. Befriending an NPC to get a bed to sleep was not supposed to be an ornmental gimmick etc

Fall out settings make it easier as the food shortage is global. Due to exhaustion of the environment, the economy shrunk accordingly. And scarcity wide spread.

But it does not change the central demand: for a game to engage in survival in decent way, NPCs have to relate to the environment the same way the PC is.

NPCs must be able to fulfill their needs by collecting from the environment so they can exhaust the environment by themselves.

This comes with technical constraints that Skyrim showed Bethesda is far from solving. Very, very far.

So called RPGers are about to discover that while they insisted for the resources of a game developpment to allocate to non essential features like the combat system, the progression system or the story, essential features were ignored due to the lack of resources allocated to them.

With the economic crisis going on, and resources diminishing, it is a pipe dream to think that the developpers can tackle issues they did not when they had unlimited means.

Hopefully, for RPGers, the other genres are in the same conditions. But as they had their priority right, they are now going for non essential features like story, a progression system etc All the so called RPG elements.

More so called RPGs to come.
 
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Survival aspects are quite fitting when it comes to the Fallout universe. I'm not a big fan of that kind of hassle, but it's too much a part of the setting to ignore.

But when it comes to what I want from FO4 - I want a much more challenging experience overall. That includes starting out as a weakling - and SLOWLY growing in power, very much like a Gothic game.

Their approach to open world makes this a very challenging task, because they're targeting a very large audience - and they want to make sure casual gamers don't feel overwhelmed.

So, they should put more work into their difficulty levels - and stop simply scaling numbers. Include a "true" hardcore mode that isn't just about survival - but about combat challenge and mechanics in general. Something for the fans that made Fallout such a success in the first place.
 
Well I play with a customized version of Arwen's mod and I love having to work to survive. The setting certainly calls for it.

Arwen's Realism Tweaks for New Vegas is the best! If I go back and play Fallout 3 again in the future I hope there is something similar.

The article misses a point, a big one: Skyrim.

Skyrim was a huge effort to try to give survival a meaning, with food, sleep being given meaning. Food was not supposed to be that half boosting system. Befriending an NPC to get a bed to sleep was not supposed to be an ornmental gimmick etc

I don't quite understand. Personally, I enjoy these kinds of mechanics and I use some hunger, thirst and hypothermia survival mods for Skyrim, but as far as I know, this was never intended by the developers to be part of the vanilla game.
 
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I'd just like companions and NPC's that are more aware of location and situations. Companion mods for Skyrim and the Fallouts have shown that it can be done. If I enter a cave of mirelurks, I want my companions to complain about the smell, boast about how many "lobsters" they can kill, compare favorite ways to cook them, whatever. I also want them joining in conversations, shopping on their own, etc. This would be my biggest single wish for the next Bethesda game.

I'd also drop the "name" actors and go with more variety than ever. Skyrim is better, but there is a lot of room for improvement still. I get tired of repetitive voices.
 
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I'd just like companions and NPC's that are more aware of location and situations. Companion mods for Skyrim and the Fallouts have shown that it can be done. If I enter a cave of mirelurks, I want my companions to complain about the smell, boast about how many "lobsters" they can kill, compare favorite ways to cook them, whatever. I also want them joining in conversations, shopping on their own, etc. This would be my biggest single wish for the next Bethesda game.

Yes, I'd love to see some story arc quests for at least a few of the possible followers. New Vegas did this very nicely IMO.
 
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First they need to get some writers who really do understand Fallout at its fundamental roots and who will actually respect the canon and write accordingly. This is one of the most important areas that needs radical improvement as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not that hung up about difficulty - I'd much prefer more effort was spent into making a greater role-playing experience than making the combat unnecessarily tedious. This means giving the player more choice and agency in affecting the world, something Bethesda hasn't tradtionally excelled at, but highly desirable in a Fallout game nonetheless.
 
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