As the title says. What kind of tropes/cliches you just roll your eyes at or seen done too many times in FoE stories? What things make you just leave the story unread or annoyed?

For me, it would be just taking what happened in the games and writing it without any twists or changes. Woo boy, another courier who got shot in the head and was rescued by a kind doctor who gives him tests, or more recently a Lone Wonderer who got frozen in some sci-fi machine, and everything happens just like in the plot of the game. How exciting!

I like it when the horses are post-apocalypse :B

I hate it when they have levels up and also rape everything

When people mistake gratuitous edginess for maturity.

This is a problem I have with a lot of speculative fiction, actually.

I never thought of this, but I haven't found something yet that would make me stop reading a story. They usually are a mix of good/bad.

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When stories follow the original's plot too much or when stories follow the typical Hero's journey structure with no twists or turns. To me a FOE story i at it's best when it explores new ideas or expends a vague idea from the original. Take Morality of Property, which explores the story or a slaver in the wasteland or Love is a beautiful thing that explores two sniper lovers as they kill ponies coming into their land.

Something really random that irks me is "obligatory Watcher". Just feels like he's not always necessary to a story and sometimes is included just to tick a checkbox. I also really dislike it when rape is overused as a plot/character development device. It's fine if it's used a little throughout the story; it can be a little cheap at times, but it wouldn't annoy me if some authors didn't insist on reusing it time and time and time again in a single story.
Gratuitous edginess that mistakes itself for maturity is also quite annoying.
In general, tropes kinda annoy me. Like leveling up "because it's FoE", or saving the wasteland. I wish more fics played around with the idea of taking a side in a conflict, rather than having the protagonist be a hero. I also kinda wish more fics explored more mundane characters in general.

That being said, I really like gratuitous edginess when it doesn't try to be mature, when it's really just that. Or when it's used as a plot device to show how bad the wasteland really is. Shock can be good when it serves a purpose in the story, though I'll admit I also enjoy being shocked in and of itself.
I adore difficult moral questions, and I love characters that are forced to make them.

I dunno, I put way too much but also way too little thought into this

It probably doesn't happen as much as I think it does, but I would prefer if the stories didn't always have their cast meet Littlepip or her companions. If your story can't stand without depending on the cast of the first big name, then what's the point?
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Like I said, probably not as big a deal as I'm worrying it will be.

I dislike anything that tries to be Fallout 4 but with ponyos, because that's a broken foundation.

Also, when stories make up super mutant analogues that are just roided/jacked/jumbo ponies. We have alicorns already, which are the equivalent of super mutants, but not grotesque the way the 2nd gen and Commonwealth/Capital Wasteland mutants are. The 1st gen mutants of the Master's army, like Marcus, are great.

I love when stories introduce new and interesting creatures, though.

Generally I don't like how its very common form what I've seen for the main character to refer to themselves as not being a smart pony while repeatedly showing high intelligence.

Why I like Hirered Gun as she says this and legit isn't very bright relying in brute force than anything clever.

Something semi connected the stories is when I see people thinking character who prefer trying to talk things out rather then just killing everyone are stupid or deserve to have terrible things happen to them to "teach them a lesson on how stupid they are" as I've seen in some comments on FoE fic that have characters want to end the cycle of violence and bloodshed dn no one calls then out or outright supports it.

My only gripe is when the story just goes on and on and on and on and on and completely loses its original vision

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That's a problem with fanfiction in general, but yeah, too many dead fics which had a good premise

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Generally I don't like how its very common form what I've seen for the main character to refer to themselves as not being a smart pony while repeatedly showing high intelligence.

I’m actually kind of surprised by this one. Just out of curiosity: How many story with supposedly not-smart, smart main characters have you read?

What I don’t like is if a story is tries to mimic the Fallout games too much. Like having Deathclaws instead of Hellhounds. That’s what I like about Fallout: Equestria. Kkat didn’t just copy Fallout but actually created Equestrian version of many creatures and factions. Alicorns, for example, are clearly inspired by Super Mutants but they are still something unique that really fits into the setting of this world.

From how I see it, post-societal genres as a whole suffer from their depictions of pain. Sympathy isn't garnered by wounds, but from turmoil and hardship. It's the "tragedy" part of pain that grips the audience and attracts our empathy. It should serve a character or narrative function. There's nothing enriching about pain on its own. It has to mean something. But in a lot of post-apocalyptic stories it's just chucked in by the bucketfull for no discernible reason. FoE spin-offs are plagued by this as well. So, probably that.

hmmm i guess i dislike it when there isnt enough allowance of the normal creatures w see in fallout. a lot of stories refuse to add the alicorns, super behemoths, deathclaws, and other creatures. The seem to focus heavily on the enclave and the steel rangers.

A REALLY big thing i don't like is how a lot of authors on this site don't broaden their use of the other species.

I've seen maybe three griffon stories, two changeling ones, and ZERO diamond dog, kirin, hippogriff, or sea pony ones. REACH OUT FARTHER PEOPLE. If the world went to hell in a hand basket, then write about all of it. not just Equestria. Even then, the few i have seen that step away from the typically chosen main characters of unicorn pegasus earth pony, sadly never have been finished. they die before they get to the second chapter.

I want to see more main character species diversity, and more use of the natural species we see in the games, as well as having authors follow through with their ideas. That last one is more a hope, and a prayer, because i know how fickle writing inspiration can be.

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There are two main ones I can think of.

One is when the story includes something just because it was in the original story, but without any thought on why it should be in their story. People often include level-up footnotes just because the original did, but without considering how the perks or progression contributes to their own story. Or they make the protagonist yet another Stable-dwelling pony of a Stable that has remained shut until two hundred years after the megaspells, because that's what happened in the original. And the protagonist almost always has or immediately acquires a PipBuck, because that's just what Fallout/Fallout: Equestria protagonists do. Stuff like that.

The other one is when a story just uses the setting as an excuse for making things extra dark and nasty, but don't have any of the counterbalance that made the original story so good. The nastiness of the Wasteland can be great as an obstacle in the way to a happier and more hopeful world, but some stories just make it nasty for nastiness' sake, and it tends to feel flat.

Seeing 'War never changes'.

So, in short, everybody dislikes stupid copies of the original fic with no thought behind copied elements.

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I haven't read any like that, and there are more things than that, but you're not wrong.

Fanfiction is all about putting established characters in new situations, and in the case of FoE spinoffs/derivatives, populating a whole sub-genre with new stories.

I sometimes wonder if I could have made To Bellenast into a non-Fallout fic, or even original fiction, but that would be recycling a lot of story elements, which I don't like that much.

The one thing I hate the most about FOE stories the the large number of quality stories that get abandoned

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Fallout 3 is just as much of a broken foundation to work on top of. Doesn’t mean there’s nothing a skilled writer could do to make it work. That being said, I agree with you, it’s absolutely an uphill battle.

I'm surprised no one has said this yet. What I don't like about FOE fics is this:

Mary Sue: I get bored quickly when the protagonist is perfect and everything turns out well for her, the other characters can't think for themselves and much of the dialogue is how great the protagonist is, these kinds of things make me uncomfortable and only make me skip these dialogues and scenes, of all the FOE stories I've read, there is no MC that makes me empathize with them, just a little Littlepip and Puppysmiles, I couldn't care less about the others, only their designs and color palettes are great but beyond that, they are characters that are difficult to have a connection with because the writer tries too hard to make them too badass and cool, turning them into one-dimensional characters.

Gore/Rape/Torture just to cause shock: This is also usually a problem. Many believe that the key to success is adding these scenes just to cause shock, when in reality they do not contribute to anything in the plot or the development of characters, which, worst of all, makes making these scenes make me laugh more than shock. After these scenes, the characters act as if nothing had happened, and then the cycle repeats itself. The key is that these scenes have a purpose and there are significant consequences in the story after a character has suffered these acts. And if that is not the case, try not to abuse this, because there comes a point where readers are going to completely skip those scenes because of how repetitive they are and the obvious lack of creativity that you are showing.

Adding Littlepip to their stories just to be treated like Jesus Christ: I have no problems with adding Littlepip or other characters from other fics in their stories; in fact, this seems interesting to me, and I plan to do the same in my story, but when it's just for "I want my OC to meet their amazing, revolutionary, incredible hero Littlepip," we already know where the shots are going. Why can't Littlepip be treated like any other pony? I don't know, but in my story, she won't be treated like a divine figure. I can assure you that