Things that irk me about Fallout 4 · 8:12pm Dec 2nd, 2015
First off. I like Fallout 4. I like playing it. I'm not saying its bad or that you shouldn't play it. But as I'm going through on my fifth play through, I keep thinking of ways I would have done it. Advance warning, some of this might be spoilery.
So, first of all, your character. I'm not going to take about the faces and graphics because I really don't care about that stuff. Pretty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm talking about the character you are immediately shoehorned into. You either play as an ex-soldier father or an ex-lawyer mother who's significant other is killed and their baby killed. I get it. It's the "Here's your motivation!" token thrown right in your face. It's a classic track down X type story.
But right at the start, they could have done something clever had they been a little more patient. After designing your character's look, the vault tec guy comes with his clipboard and questions. I wrote about this somewhere else, so I apologize if I repeat myself. First you set your name and your stats. Then your perks, something woefully lacking from FO 4. Then on your last page, you set your background and occupation. Then, if you pick "rural" when you talk to Abernathy, you greet him complimenting his crops and automatically establishing you know about farming. If you pick "Socialite" then Emogene Cabot is shocked... SHOCKED... to see you alive and so young after 200 years with no serum. Likewise, if you pick Law-Enforcement as your background, it makes more sense for you to help Garvey. And certain quests can be triggered based solely on the background. Now you have new reasons to play through more than one time!
Anyway, new thoughts. Imagine if instead of your husband, the Vault Tec guy assures you that there's room in the vault for you and your husband. Then you can respond. "Oh, that's a relief." Or "Oh, he's just my brother / sister". Shawn then cries and the VT guy asks if the baby is yours or his. If yours "And the father?" And you either say "In Lexington, not in the picture, deceased, or none of your damned business." The Vault Tec guys notes that VT has them down for 3 spots. "No room for the robot, of course." Of course, bombs fall and your brother / sister laments their spouse being in Lexington, but they have to go for Shawn. In the vault, they tell you you're going into cryostasis, and that it would be safer if Shawn went with the other for medical reasons. Who are you to argue? The alternative is starving to death. So either happily or not, Shawn goes in the other pod and the events unfold.
Now why would I want to do this? I played through a bunch, and the first time was pretty meh because the 'looking for my son' had me feeling like I was playing Finding Nemo. When I played through as a mom, I actually cared about the plot. And establishing who you are is a vital aspect to any FO game. Imagine if you were Shawn's single mom BEFORE being put on ice. That baby is your world. The motivation is extremely real. If you're playing a gay character, as the game gives the option, then that baby might be all you have to connect you to someone who died in the bombs.
Anyway, after you get out of the pod, you are not the only survivor. Sturgis and the others are in their pods, begging you to let them out. You can, of course, let them all die. You monster. But you can save a half dozen or so. Then you go back to sanctuary hills, one of six settlements you manage.
Yes. Six. Not thirty. One in Sanctuary. One for the Minutemen. One for the Brotherhood. One for the Railroad. One for the Institute. And one that is special. More on that later.
I actually like the settlement manager. For me, rebuilding civilization is awesome. But in FO4, it's horrible trying to see to the needs of so many. Worse, it's hard to CARE, and that's what matters most. Eventually, I give up and let all but one or two of my settlements get wiped out so I don't have to deal with the annoyance of dumb attacks and endless fetch and rescue quests. So right off the bat you save Mama Murphy, Sturgis and the others. He used to live in the building with all the workshops, and if you bring him stuff, he can start fixing things up. So the scavenging mechanic still has a place for me. And if you're not following the plot nuggets, eventually you'll get quests to nudge you towards the main story.
Your settlements have ratings of "Food and Water, shelter, health, defense, income, comfort, and prestige". Sturgis tells you that if you can help him gather 100 or so pieces of wood and metal, he'll fix up a house for them to stay in. You do, and the house is repaired and shelter goes from zero to 1. Bring him parts for the old water pump and some melons from the old garden, and he'll raise food and water to 1. Bring him enough to make 'sleeping bags' and raise comfort to 1. The game will automatically spawn enough of them for your population, so long as you have enough shelter. Bring enough parts for gun turrets and place them where they need to be, and defense raises to 1. That's enough to start, but he'll think of more things you can do to improve Sanctuary.
What about all those farms and settlements and the like? What are they good for, then?
Plenty. When you do quests for them, they'll give you a shipment of supplies for making things to your settlement of choice. But you're not actually responsible for their survival. They were surviving before you. Now as you build your settlement up, you have the ability to pick which farms you want to put under your protection for said supplies. If you build up ALL your settlements, you can singlehandedly protect most of the commonwealth.
But which of my settlements is most important? Easy. As you travel, you'll find exceptional, non-companion individuals. When you complete quests for them, you assign them to the settlement you want them at. Spread them out or put them together, but finding exceptional people gives you an ability to raise your settlement levels even higher. Eventually people stop talking about Diamond City and going to your town instead.
But I want to create a settlement from scratch! Nooooo problem! Because you can pick one of several locations to build from scratch, thanks to the automated builder Rob and his auto drones. No group or story affiliation, just build whatever you want. Tired of that location? Move Rob to a new one. You just have to give him enough junk.
Anyway, need to go. These are just my ideas.
I have to say that after finally finding a tutorial on youtube about the Settler mod for Fallout 3 and comparing it to the in game Settler mode of Fallout 4, I can say that I like how the newer one looks. Sure, you can't just select any old area to set down with, but it seems to have a lot more options of setting up your Settlements.
3587707 It just annoys me. FO4 has so much wonderful potential but it just doesn't quite get there. Like I love rebuilding civilization, but the constant attacks, the 'happiness' alerts with no explanation as to why, and so many settlements with no other purpose other than being there wears on me.
Odd thing I noticed in my time playing the game in sanctuary I'll have say 16 people and say 20 beds. plenty of food and water yet the happiness level goes from like 80 down to 67 I'll talk to one of the settlers and see what's wrong and they're complaining about the bed situation. Seriously? there's 16 of you people and 20 beds! 20!!! what does the one guy at the gate ( I like putting up walls around my settlements) not like his sleeping bag?!?
Very odd glitch or bug and the whole lack of an actual tutorial for the settlement mode kind of ruin it for me...almost, I love building up settlements so it's still fun.
Took me forever to figure out how to set up supply runs between settlements and before that it took me a bit to figure out how to assign people to shops/food/guard duty
All in all though I rather like your ideas, really hope someone makes an alternate start mod for Fo4 where you do have the gang (Sturgis, Mama Murphy etc) in the vault with you or say have you start out at the police station with the Brotherhood or w/e. that and maybe a mod that possibly brings back the old perk/skills from the previous games (not sure if that'll be possible). Think it was on angryjoe's review that he points out that the whole leveling system has been dumbed down way too much and just isnt as fun as previous games.
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I don't think they like communal sleeping arrangements. Better to build small shacks for them. Just a theory I'm working on right now.
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The bed situation thing is a bit strange but i encountered it too, i think its tied to the population cap of a settlement, which is 10 + charisma (after that the town will be gray in the send to dialog) but for some reason people keep sporadically coming in, i don't know if this is related to the temporary buffs (clothing, drugs) that can raise your charisma, because the dialog option gets available again if you use those and your charisma is higher than the current pop + 10.
So i guess when you have lower charisma than your settlement would normally require, they start complaining about the bed situation even if there are enough beds around.
There's a mod that removes Settlement attacks
As well as max settler population, infinite budget, increased building area, making Concord into a Settlement, etc...
Meanwhile I'm over here murdering Synths and Ghouls for the
EnclaveBrotherhood with Buzz LightyearI basically ignored settlements in my first playthrough, and only had a couple attacks. Seriously, I could count them on one hand.
Now in my second game I've already had multiple settlements demolished and quests failed because of it with approximately the same time played. I'm starting to wonder if my 10 Luck had anything to do with it...
Preston is one of my favorite followers, and his perk for maxed out friendship is awesome, but I hate trying to talk to him only to have him tell me about five settlements in need, or turning on the radio to figure out if my artillery is in range only to be told to go save another settlement. It's nice to have infinite quests, but can't they be less in my face?
3588526 Yeah, I've done that several times too.
The thing is that I'd like my settlements to be special. There for a reason with a little bit of history or reason behind it.
Like Sanctuary is an important place. It's your pre-war home. It's at the sight where America was born. There's awesome quest related thematics you could make there. Likewise with the castle. I'd love it if you could build it up into a real military hub to restore civility to the region. I could see Croup Manor being turned into the base for the Railroad, with a boat house hidden in the cliff face to smuggle out synths. Or you doing a quest line to liberate Logan Airport for an eventual return of the Brotherhood. And say you come across this super crazy engineer making mechanical radroaches for fun that's terrorizing Country Crossing. When you actually get to him, he says he wasn't doing it to hurt any one. The design just evolved past his ability to react. But hey, if you give him a place to live and a workshop, he'll make your base a little more secure. Things like that.
Yeah, I'm a story slut. I want so much damned story with my game. And instead what I get is "Go to X, kill Y, repeat."
Plus, there's the question of how you, an ex-lawyer, actually happen to BUILD all this stuff. Is basic turret design standard with law degrees now? That's why I'd love it if you just decided where things went and some tinkery fabricator inclined person built it for you.
3588662 With my new character it's all roleplaying, I ignored the story and no longer said any pre-war knowledge or asked any questions a waster wouldn't know. This new one is just a scaver looking out for number one. I like a story where it's clear what to do and how to do it is up to me, but after so many times you know how it goes. My first character was BoS all the way, this guy is more likely to either stick alone or do minutemen stuff for support. As for crafting, I have no clue, maybe her hobby was building turrets?
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My settlements need some stronger defenses here and there, because they're getting attacked by some truly fierce opposition. I haven't had a settlement flattened, yet. I went for the Institute ending and I use the relay to get around post-ending. There's a neat little trick you can do where you can avoid advancing the clock and failing timed quests like settlement defenses, but you need to side with the Institute to make use of it. Simply fast-travel to the Institute, and then fast-travel to your destination. Both legs of the journey, you will use the relay and your trip will be nearly instantaneous on your Pip-boy clock. It is definitely unnerving to be attacked by over a dozen Level 70-something Charred Feral Ghouls, but I have a Combat Rifle with Two Shot that I bought from Vault 81, and it really does the trick.
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There's a bug in the game right now where if a cell containing a settlement is unloaded, it might not track the resources properly, and happiness will drop as a result.
First time a settlement got attacked I was deep in vault 114. so couldn't just turn around to rescue them, however by the time I got there the attack had only just started.... My biggest issue is that any settler with a gun... just RUSHES outside the settlement to fight off the raiders, often making the fight be out of range of my machine gun turrets!
What annoys me, is the fact that while playing the ex-soldier, it is logical be be good with guns, have no major problems killing people and thing like that, but why the hell his wife is equally good at them? did she train as well?
And it is my personal headcanon as to why the player can use power armour without special training, he got it already in the army before. But again why does his wife can use it so easily as well, The raiders might have modified it enough to make it easier for them to wear, but the standard military one ALWAYS required as special training. I shall ignore the random settlers entering your armours during settlement attacks.
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It's one of my gripes about the story in FO4, and really in the Bethesda Fallouts in general. Everyone around you is staggeringly incompetent. The game's set over a century after Vault 13 opened, and in a fairly densely populated area, there's still undisturbed bodies and useful artifacts like food, medicine, and guns just lying around in the open. Most of these people can't even manage to build a wall that doesn't have gaps you can walk through, and I have to assume the climate has shifted drastically or they would have all frozen to death by now.
Being a 20th century man/woman and ex-solider/lawyer (stupid gendered backstory) means that your basic DIY skills are probably more than 90% of these people are capable of.
I am way late hopping on board this train, but what you posted here basically summed up my thoughts of fallout 4 in a nutshell. I went into the game thinking that you would get one settlement. Only one, and now I'm most of the way through and I think I have about 20. The easiest way to make my point is to compare it to polygamy. Sure, you might have 20 wives, but you never have enough time for all of them, and they're definitely going to feel unloved if you try to love them all equally. But chances are, there's always going to be one that you love the most.
Sanctuary is a massive place. The endless possibilities of that massive plot alone are huge. But there's also an item-limiter and a 23 settler cap. It always feels empty. It also doesn't help that every settler is a randomly generated NPC with no name, voice by the same half-dozen voice actors. I would gladly give up my other 20 settlements for a single one with more personal characters recruitable from the wasteland. I've honestly killed settlers for fun because I just didn't care about them. What's there to care about when you can travel away, come back, and have new ones?