Elements and ideas Fallout 4 should take over from Fallout New Vegas

The Dutch Ghost

The Dutch Ghost

Grouchy old man of NMA
Moderator
Hello all,

I know this is a rather pointless thread as I doubt that anyone of the Fallout 4 team will ever check out this forum, and even the most features and designs are probably implemented by now.
But should that rare unusual thing happen and Bethesda designers do take a look, here are some of the things I hope they learn from Fallout New Vegas and do different than Fallout 3.

Please add your own suggestions to the list.

1. Not an over abundance of pointless locations. I have been playing Fallout 3 again and what I immediately notice after having played FNV so often is how the Capital Wasteland is filled with so many pointless locations that are basically loot caverns from dungeon RPGs.
Personally I don't really think these in general fit well in Fallout as most equipment comes from trading or combating enemies. A few such locations are not bad but in Fallout 3 it seems that these were the majority of the locations to fill up an otherwise empty map.

2. Do not clutter up the locations. One thing I find such an improvement of FNV over Fallout 3 is how almost all the objects and items the player comes across can be used in some way, being ingredients to various crafting recipes rather than just giving them to particular collectors for caps.
Please focus more on including such items and less loose pointless junk.

3. Quality over quantity, kind of related to no 1. Adding lots and lots of stuff does not automatically make a game good or improves an average game. As some people tell me when I go overboard with my writing; sometimes less is better.
If there are for example a smaller number of locations but each of these is much better designed than I think most of us would rather see that.
Making a map several times bigger doesn't mean much if it is just more empty space and loot dungeons.

4. Quests that give the player a reason to travel into the eight direction of the map. If someone would just solely follow the main quests in Fallout 3 there would never be much of a reason to explore much of the North or south-west of the Capital Wasteland map as there is not really any incentive to go to these parts.
IMO Fallout New Vegas handled it much better and even though some of these quests were delivery quests it bring the player into contact with settlements and NPCs he or she would otherwise never encounter if one did not explore the map for no reason.
 
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1. Alternate Ammo types.
2. Variety in guns so all combat skills are viable with the proper dedication (In Fallout 3 is pretty pointless to make a melee or Unarmed oriented character, and Big guns suck)
3. More NPCs to talk to, in 3 you barely have any interactions with NPCs outside of vendor, and those have pretty terrible dialogue and usually no stories to tell.
4. Branching quests and alternate endings, obviously.
5. Have actually good writting, don't try to wringle the player into the "good route" with heavy handed bible quotes and shit.
 
1: Hardcore mode. Granted, it's not actually that difficult, but I appreciated the extra factors that helped push it a bit more towards a survival experience.
2: DLC experiences that are both solid standalone experiences, as well as interconnected. I greatly appreciated that the four main DLC for New Vegas were not only their own, usually very good experiences, but if you took the time to explore, you could see connections to the others as well. It demonstrated a level of forethought that I found extremely refreshing.
3: Perks at every other level. Frankly, in vanilla Fallout 3, having a perk every level just resulted in me having perks I didn't want, or need. Even every other level still had a bit of that, but much less.
4: It will never happen, but a player character without a strictly defined backstory. I loved being able to fill in my own past for playing different characters. But it seems that Bethesda is giving us a forced backstory, again.
5: Companion quests. Companion quests made me feel like they were actual friends, rather than just some dweeb following me around that I throw extra crap on.
6: Little to no Enclave. Yeah, they were in New Vegas, but it was also very easy to completely miss out that they're there. Seriously. They're dead. Fallout 3 was already a contrivance bringing them back. There's no excuse from this point on.
 
How I could I forget the companion quests? Yeah those were great, really made you care about your companions, they weren't just pack mules you hired for 1000 caps like the ones in FO3, I even grew attached to ED-E despitethe vanilla ED-E being just a foating ball that beeped and booped (and played a little songe when starting combat).
 
Hello all,

Glad to see more people get into the spirit and bring up these good suggestions and ideas.
I have been thinking myself what to add to everything you have already said which I also feel should make a Fallout game enjoyable.

1. Well thought out factions. No factions for lulz sake with rather stereotypical or ridiculous goals. I know the Legion kind of felt cartoonish evil sometimes but the developers made it clear that time constraints also somewhat prevented to make this factions more balanced and an opposite to the NCR rather than just antagonists in general.

2. Well thought out settlements. Kind of like with the factions I described earlier I would like settlements to be well thought out. Reasons for why they happen to be established at the locations where they are now, having economies and means of economy that make sense and that are shown in some way and not just mentioned. (oh Rivet City has hydroponic bays. Okay, show them)
And of course inhabitants that fit both the location and of course the Fallout setting in general, a few 'silly' people to break the tone of the game aren't so bad but don't make them ridiculous or annoying for the sake of trying to be funny. (No Bark was much better than characters like Moira Brown or the Nuka Coke lady, both were so grating and dense that I wanted to shoot them at some point)

3. Damage Threshold from Fallout New Vegas. I don't recall exactly how the system in Fallout 3 worked but armor really quickly went down during combat. (also, easy on the damage/reduction level dammit)

4. Skills like repair not being limited by skill level but rather modifying the variable how much an item is repaired. I ended up with several items recently in Fallout 3 I could not combined because my skill level was not high enough, I much prefer the FNV system.

5. Skills also affecting various conversations as in Fallout New Vegas. I really think it made skills even more interesting as depending how good you were are guns, sneak, explosives and so on new dialogue options were opened.
 
1. Well though out settalments. One of the things I hated about Fallout 3 was the utter lack of civilization. I get it's a post apocalyptic game and all, but when the trading hub of the Capitol Wasteland, Canterbury Commons is five people and about three houses. That is hardly a trading hub. Shame they cut the trading bazaar in the cul-de-sac for whatever reason. So far, Fallout 4 seems to be showing some promise in this department.

2. Ammo types for various guys.

3. Very little of the Brotherhood and Enclave. A few passing mentions is fine, but having them as the center pieces of the story again? Nope.

4. Flesh out those original factions from FO3! Talon Mercs, The Institute, you name it! Please add some back story to these guys. NV did this fairly well with Caesars Legion, but acknowledged they had to cut stuff for time reasons.

5. Better writing please! Hire Chris Avellone if you must. Throwing Emil on writing duties again certainly won't give me much hope.

Probably some more I could think of, but these are the most important IMO at the moment.
 
I forgot one!

6: Bring back the reputation system! Maybe even do away with karma, or if that absolutely must be kept, have it pertain more to certain perks only activating with certain karma levels. Reputation feels much more natural.
 
Everything except hand holding and those quest from Honest Hearts in which you are told more things through pip-boy quest marker than through the dialogs that start those quests. And no more magical quest marker. If the guest giver or the player-character have no idea about where is the macguffin there is no reason the player should know from the get go.
 
Chromevod said:
I forgot one!

6: Bring back the reputation system! Maybe even do away with karma, or if that absolutely must be kept, have it pertain more to certain perks only activating with certain karma levels. Reputation feels much more natural.
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This is the one thing i really hope they hold on to. The different ammo and currencies were cool but its not a big deal if that doesnt make it. The faction rep needs to be there. One thing that really bugged me about FO 3 is why no one in the citadel blinked a eye when my character walked in wearing enclave armor
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
I know this is a rather pointless thread as I doubt that anyone of the Fallout 4 team will ever check out this forum, and even the most features and designs are probably implemented by now.
Click to expand...

According to Todd they started designing FO4 just after FO3 and some fans suggest that the design phase was well over before FO:NV came. With less then 150 days till release it is certainly feature locked by now.. So this pretty much a rehash of what 'FO:NV did right', and I don't expect to see in Beth FO4...

Anyway few quick notes:


  • Do not clutter up the locations. One thing I find such an improvement of FNV over Fallout 3 is how almost all the objects and items the player comes across can be used in some way, being ingredients to various crafting recipes rather than just giving them to particular collectors for caps.

What we seen of FO4 crafting system and "junk management" is a vast improvement FO:NV, I do hope that with less junk in the inventory they would focus on more unique items (i.e. not afraid of information overload)


  • "Making a map several times bigger doesn't mean much if it is just more empty space and loot dungeons"

Amen to that, I am so tired of all those open-world games, unfortunately, Skyrim showed those are still in huge demand.. :(


  • Quests that give the player a reason to travel into the eight direction of the map.

According to the misquoted segment about player choices, Todd said they spent more time designing the plot to fit the nature of their open-world game, but don't expect FO:NV world design.


  • Branching quests and alternate endings, obviously.

The Devs specificly noted this as something they worked on. (likely they wanted to avoid the same FO3 ending issue)


  • Perks at every other level. Frankly, in vanilla Fallout 3, having a perk every level just resulted in me having perks I didn't want, or need. Even every other level still had a bit of that, but much less.

Let me stop, so far it looks like perks will replace skills, so don't waste your time.


  • Being able to alt-tab and then tab back into the game (on my machine I can with F:NV, but not Fallout 3).

Almost certainly a non issue. FO3 came out for WinXP.. and on a ~different engine. So on the technical side look at Skyrim for comparison.
 
One lesson I would like Bethesda to learn from New Vegas is to not forget that Raiders and Super Mutants are people. They may be bad, or deeply irrational, or fearful of outsiders but their retain some part of their humanity and so sometimes you can reason with them, and that they're far more likely to do things like "form tribes for mutual protection" than to devolve into the cannibal sadist raiders that you get throughout Fallout 3.

Most tribes raid, so from a perspective the Khans are raiders, the three families were raiders, the Dead Horses are raiders, the Twisted Hairs were raiders and the identities of those tribes are far more interesting than "they're keeping random detached body parts in a non-functioning cooler" nearby where they sleep (can you imagine the smell?) Marcus is inherently reasonable, Keene is not immune to reason, Rhonda becomes your friend if you fix her robot, and Davison will deal with you peacefully if you don't kill too many of his friends. These snippets of humanity are far more interesting than whatever it was that the Fo3 super mutants were supposed to be (cannon fodder for forced gunfights I guess?)

Plus, that horror stuff is much more effective in small doses. The resolution to Vault 11 was far more far horrifying than all the headless corpses chained to mattresses in Fallout 3.
 
I'm tempted to say almost everything, as I love New Vegas to death... I might catch some flak for saying this, but I would want to see the Enclave again, although in a New Vegas way (certainly not the utter cartoonish ridiculousness of Fallout 3). In the end though, I would settle for two things:

1. Branching storylines, with branching quests.
2. Killable NPCs.

That's all I ask, I hope it's not too much.

EDIT: Ok, a third thing, no goddamn black and white factions. Please, please make believable characters/factions.
 
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Khannis said:
I'm tempted to say almost everything, as I love New Vegas to death... I might catch some flak for saying this, but I would want to see the Enclave again, although in a New Vegas way (certainly not the utter cartoonish ridiculousness of Fallout 3). In the end though, I would settle for two things:

1. Branching storylines, with branching quests.
2. Killable NPCs.

That's all I ask, I hope it's not too much.

EDIT: Ok, a third thing, no goddamn black and white factions. Please, please make believable characters/factions.
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I don't actually hate the presence of the Enclave in FO3 as much as everyone else seems to. It's a little bit of a stretch them being on the east coast, but it's not utterly ridiculous that there would be splinter factions who weren't destroyed at the Oil Rig. Bethesda did a lot of stuff wrong relating to the Enclave, but their mere presence isn't one of them for me.

Anyway, for better or worse, lore is that there were established on the east coast to some degree. While I think that they definitely shouldn't be the main antagonists, it could be interesting to have a small group of Enclave survivors trying to find their place in a post-Enclave world, something a little like the Remnants questline from New Vegas, but with a different twist. They could be guided or coerced into giving up their Enclave roots, using their gear and experience to help people, becoming particularly fearsome raiders, going out in a blaze of glory, or even turning on each other, depending on the player's actions. That would be a really cool side quest.
 
Focus more on making a faction's structure correspond to its lore. In FO3 Super Mutants worked like they had a command structure and planning even though the game explicitly told us they were completely disorganized; the Enclave had more people than the Brotherhood even though we didn't see any sign of them recruiting new soldiers and the numbers don't match the story that they are remnants from Navarro (unless each of their members had 10 kids each). Whereas in New Vegas there is an explanation for how every faction works (the NCR has a defined chain of command and most named troops have explanations for why they joined, the Legion has its own hierarchy and a draft system sustained by conquering tribes, the Brotherhood is as small as it makes sense for them to be, Jacobstown is made of remnants from the Master's army, Black Mountain is made of mutants who splintered from Marcus, etc). Consistency makes the groups seem more real and important within the game world
 
Stone Cold Robert House said:
Focus more on making a faction's structure correspond to its lore. In FO3 Super Mutants worked like they had a command structure and planning even though the game explicitly told us they were completely disorganized; the Enclave had more people than the Brotherhood even though we didn't see any sign of them recruiting new soldiers and the numbers don't match the story that they are remnants from Navarro (unless each of their members had 10 kids each). Whereas in New Vegas there is an explanation for how every faction works (the NCR has a defined chain of command and most named troops have explanations for why they joined, the Legion has its own hierarchy and a draft system sustained by conquering tribes, the Brotherhood is as small as it makes sense for them to be, Jacobstown is made of remnants from the Master's army, Black Mountain is made of mutants who splintered from Marcus, etc). Consistency makes the groups seem more real and important within the game world
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I didn't realise the Enclave in FO3 were supposed to be Navarro survivors. I always assumed they had been waiting underground in vaults for the right moment to emerge, and the chaos of the Capital Wasteland with the Brotherhood schism and conflict with the Vault 87 super mutants was what they needed. If they're a rag-tag bunch of survivors rather than an organised force enacting a plan that has been in place for years then yeah, that's kind of daft.
 
Yes, their presence itself isn't the most absurd thing about them at all. With their numbers toned down, they could have been perfectly viable lore-wise, even if a little far fetched, but thats no strange thing to Fallout. The problem is that they behave themselves (also, the Brotherhood, also, your father) like forced, cartoonish characters. The Enclave is made of real people, and the same goes for the Brotherhood. Instead, in Fallout 3 they are portrayed as good and bad guys and that's it.

Autumn doesn't try to convince you of anything, like he does with your father, no "rightful government" thing. You can help Eden and save Raven Rock, but do you get rewarded? Nope. Not even a little. In fact, you get to destroy their last base on the East Coast for reasons nobody friggin' knows. Your father knows instantly that they're the bad guys AND that Autumn is pivotal to their whole scheme (what the fuck is he doing personally sealed in that chamber anyways?) AND promptly suicides to kill him and try to kill some guys in sealed power armor. Guess what? It doesn't work. And your father is supposed to be a hero. Brilliant. Yes, that's the same guy who also left you knowingly locked up in a Vault with a psychopathic Overseer, to do, you know, stuff.

Contrast that with Caesar in New Vegas. Yes, hes an egomaniac bloodthirsty dictator, but even he recognizes that you have a common enemy (if you hate the NCR) and so you can serve him. It makes sense, to be valued and regarded as a player in the race for power in the Wasteland. And instead you have to help a bunch of white knights in power armor capture a Water Purifier from the Enclave to... Activate it. Which the Enclave expressly said they would do. You have no say in any of this, whether you help, who you help, how; Nothing. Just obey the script, son.

And yes, Super Mutants in Fallout 3 were also a joke. They worked much better in NV, like, well, everything.

That all said, I'd love to see the Enclave in some capacity in Fallout 4, but done right, like they did in New Vegas. Arcade had grown up with them, and felt severe misgivings about them, understanbly. Daisy Whitman just loved to fly, Moreno was a born soldier, and Johnson even hated his own life and the organization he was a part of. You know, like PEOPLE. Is that so difficult?
 
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Stone Cold Robert House said:
Focus more on making a faction's structure correspond to its lore. In FO3 Super Mutants worked like they had a command structure and planning even though the game explicitly told us they were completely disorganized; the Enclave had more people than the Brotherhood even though we didn't see any sign of them recruiting new soldiers and the numbers don't match the story that they are remnants from Navarro (unless each of their members had 10 kids each). Whereas in New Vegas there is an explanation for how every faction works (the NCR has a defined chain of command and most named troops have explanations for why they joined, the Legion has its own hierarchy and a draft system sustained by conquering tribes, the Brotherhood is as small as it makes sense for them to be, Jacobstown is made of remnants from the Master's army, Black Mountain is made of mutants who splintered from Marcus, etc). Consistency makes the groups seem more real and important within the game world
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There were people in Raven Rock, that isn't something mentioned in game, but someone had to maintain the place for 170 years between the bombs falling and the oil rig getting destroyed. Since robots don't really think, someone had to be around to trouble shoot them.

I would like to see factions that aren't caricatures like in New Vegas or black and white like in 3. I say caricatures when referring to New Vegas because the NCR was just a joke about pre WW2 USA, the Legion is evil for no real reason, House is just stereotypical fat cat, and Benny/You are nothing in particular. As for not guiding us down some path, Obsidian did do that with New Vegas. As far as who you could side with House was the only one with redeeming value, his knowledge and technology, even though he didn't have people to do it and Benny was one of the few main quest related characters that I though had depth.

I personally had more of a connection to the Kings, Followers and the towns I went through. I wished that they did something like Broken Steel where you went around cleaning up after the main quest ended. And if you picked an independent ending, you could use the Kings and Followers to take the place of the NCR after they retreat. Building something that could become a country or just enough to make the NCR think twice about invading. The way I describe New Vegas is a cookie that didn't have enough chocolate chips in it. There were some very satisfying bites, but not enough for me to say it was on the whole better than 3. If Obsidian gets another go at a game, I hope they take the time to make a good game, not just rushing something to cash in on.
 
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