A couple of choice shares about Fallout 4 on Reddit

ZigzagPX4

ZigzagPX4

The Swiftness of the Ranger
 
" I'd like to point out that an RPG doesn't involve making choices,"

How the hell do you roleplay if you don't actually make any choices? Hell, what game doesn't involve making choices (even Pac-Man has choices: turn left, right, or go straight)? Roleplaying games are defined by being about making choices, specifically about choices that impact who the main character is and what happens in the story.

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that it's pretty funny that poster's example for the extreme end of "player-defined game" is Deus Ex, since Deus Ex is notable mostly for being the first game to successfully combine a roleplaying game with THINGS THAT ARE NOT ROLEPLAYING GAMES. I mean, don't get me wrong since I think Deus Ex is a great game, it's just that this is a game that basically is equal parts Thief, Fallout, and Half-Life so if that's your platonic ideal for roleplaying game, I have all sorts of questions.
 
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I really like that so many of our criticisms of F4 are largely shared by the gaming community on websites as mainstream as reddit. It's too late to impact the overwhelmingly-positive reviews of the game, but if there's enough fan backlash on this, we might end up with a situation similar to what's happened in the aftermaths of films like Prometheus and Star Trek: Into Darkness, where some of the creators actually took note of the dissent from vocal fans and promised to do better with the franchises' next installments.
 
PossibleCabbage said:
" I'd like to point out that an RPG doesn't involve making choices,"

How the hell do you roleplay if you don't actually make any choices? Hell, what game doesn't involve making choices (even Pac-Man has choices: turn left, right, or go straight)? Roleplaying games are defined by being about making choices, specifically about choices that impact who the main character is and what happens in the story.

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that it's pretty funny that poster's example for the extreme end of "player-defined game" is Deus Ex, since Deus Ex is notable mostly for being the first game to successfully combine a roleplaying game with THINGS THAT ARE NOT ROLEPLAYING GAMES. I mean, don't get me wrong since I think Deus Ex is a great game, it's just that this is a game that basically is equal parts Thief, Fallout, and Half-Life so if that's your platonic ideal for roleplaying game, I have all sorts of questions.
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I can not argue for everyone else of couse, I have only my own experience and the opinions of the small circle of gamers that we have been in my youth, when we enjoyed games like Deus Ex 1, Half Life and Baldurs Gate.

The thing is, no one of us, as great as Deus Ex was, ever saw it as "real" RPG. However, we have grown up mostly with games like Diablo 1, Baldurs Gate, Divine Divnity, Gothic. Maybe if we experienced more RPGs, strictly played in First Person, like the Wizardy series, our opinions might have changed. But there you controll most of the time a whole party. While Deus Ex 1 is today more RPG than almost ANY(!) RPG released by the big developers, like EA/Bioware, Bethesda, Ubisoft etc. It speaks more for how watered down the term and genre has become in general, rather than for the quality of those past games.

For me, Deus Ex 1 was always a shooter. A very special kind of shooter of course, with a lot of depth in both narrative and gameplay. But still. At the end of the day, more FPS than RPG. And I can also not remember that DE1 was actually sold as RPG.
 
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"Skills being gone isn't an issue"

Right not an issue...I wonder what their definition of RPG is?
 
MercenarySnake said:
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"Skills being gone isn't an issue"

Right not an issue...I wonder what their definition of RPG is?
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Lack of skills isn't really a that much of an issue, as there are plenty of pen & paper RPGs that eschew a skill system. The issue is that the removal of skills reduces both granularity (so it keeps you from hanging out +2-5 mods to skills as minor bonuses) and it eliminates an avenue through which you can understand who your character is. Like Todd's stated reason for the removal of skills was how confused players were about the value of Charisma versus Speech, but "I have a 75 guns skill" is a lot easier to understand as "someone who is good with guns" than "I have 2 ranks of the rifleman perk and 1 rank each of sniper and gun nut". Skills, after all, could be used as an expression of what your character is interested in getting better at, accumulated experience with, or trains for so "this level I'm going to get better at sneak, guns, and medicine" is a lot easier to understand than "I might take another rank in Sniper or get Commando."

It's just weird since between stats, skills, traits, and perks Bethesda made a deliberate choice to highlight the least concrete of the set for Fallout 4.
 
They could have handled the lack of skills better by giving your character 3 tag perks, I used the console commands to add tag perks based on the type of character i was playing. What really bothers me is the lack of a level cap.
 
Spacemunkey said:
They could have handled the lack of skills better by giving your character 3 tag perks, I used the console commands to add tag perks based on the type of character i was playing. What really bothers me is the lack of a level cap.
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Tag perks are useless since some perks only have a few ranks, how would tag perks work in your opinion?
 
For me I chose to add 2 perks that reflected my characters time in the army and one that reflected his personality, all within the specials I chose; Rifleman, gun nut, and lady killer. By tagging these from the beginning, at least for me, gave me some choice as to who he was. I could have just as easily chose medic and science or heavy gunner and armorer, etc. I flat out refused to let Bethesda 100% dictate to me the character I play.
 
Spacemunkey said:
For me I chose to add 2 perks that reflected my characters time in the army and one that reflected his personality, all within the specials I chose; Rifleman, gun nut, and lady killer. By tagging these from the beginning, at least for me, gave me some choice as to who he was. I could have just as easily chose medic and science or heavy gunner and armorer, etc. I flat out refused to let Bethesda 100% dictate to me the character I play.
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Still going to end up putting points into other perks like I did after picking what I wanted. Unless you limit yourself intentionally.
 
MercenarySnake said:
Still going to end up putting points into other perks like I did after picking what I wanted. Unless you limit yourself intentionally.
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That's where my issue with no level cap comes from. Another thing that bothers me is no alternate hacking/lock picking. In FNV I use a mod called "resource based hacking and lockpicking" which allowed you to craft hacking tools at a work bench and the difficulty of the terminal dictated how many were needed to unlock it; never invested in lockpicking again and only in science if my character build called for it.
 
The game was so bad even the fanboys are having doubts

I liked FO3, i didnt love it but i didn't think that it was a waste of my time like i do with FO4. I thought if FO4 was sort of a repeat of 3 but with a NV style faction system then it would be acceptable. They did implement the faction system but they forgot to make the factions interesting in any way.
 
Spacemunkey said:
They could have handled the lack of skills better by giving your character 3 tag perks, I used the console commands to add tag perks based on the type of character i was playing. What really bothers me is the lack of a level cap.
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I think a better approach still would be to drop separate perk choices and just emphasize skills. Maybe don't have a 100 point scale, but maybe a 5 or 10 point scale, and then give perks corresponding to levels of skills. For example, instead of the Demolition Expert perk, you could just have "your grenades arc" and "you have a larger radius" something you get automatically with certain ranks of the explosives skill.

Like I think the confusing thing in Fallout 3 for some people was not how Stats and skills interact, since most everybody understands that "being swole" and "knowing how to throw a punch" are different things, so Strength and Unarmed are different, but instead that perks and skills both represent "things you've learned how to do" and are in that sense redundant.
 
So... A skill tree, essentially. Also known as what Borderlands did, but without the... Treeness...

I guess.
 
ZigzagPX4 said:
A couple of things I got from Reddit to share with everyone here and discuss. I found them interesting, and wanted to see some POVs on them.

First point - people do realise that Fallout 4 isn't an RPG anymore.

Second point - Bethesda have been awfully silent ever since the game released. I mean, I know it was the holiday, but still...

Third point - a suburb in Japan (no longer exists) within a baseball stadium. A vision of what Diamond City could've been.

Final point - I made a post asking about the cons of Fallout 4 a month ago, long before I realised how flawed the game was.



And then there's this. :whatever:
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In regards to the second point, I keep seeing people hold up their "12 million units shipped" claim like it means "units sold." Why? I don't know. Maybe to justify their support/purchase of a lackluster, hack job of a fifth entry in a near 20 year old franchise.
 
Even if it sold that many units it's not like it determines if it's a good game or not. They might as well add in the number of "Steam refunds", "copies returned", and how many are still playing it today.

I know this doesn't mean much but it looks like the numbers of people playing it has dwindled:
 

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MercenarySnake said:
Even if it sold that many units it's not like it determines if it's a good game or not. They might as well add in the number of "Steam refunds", "copies returned", and how many are still playing it today.

I know this doesn't mean much but it looks like the numbers of people playing it has dwindled:
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I figured it would. Hype only drives engagement so far.
 
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