Fallout 4 Survival Update is out [BETA]

NotAcasul

meanie
https://community.bethesda.net/community/fallout/fallout-4/survival-beta

Here's a place to go over the bugs it has.

https://community.bethesda.net/thread/2921

Here's a place to actually get the update.

"Fallout 4’s All New Survival Mode
Survival Mode is something many of us realized we wanted to experiment with once we had spent quality time playtesting Fallout 4 toward the end of its development. At launch, we discovered many of you wanted the same thing. So how did these changes come about?

Two of our designers, Josh Hamrick and Jon Paul Duvall, used our internal Game Jam to visualize what an overhauled Survival Mode might look like in Fallout 4. Thanks to their Game Jam success, we then added several programmers, and they built out many of the ideas we’d all been setting aside while playtesting.

Today, we would like to show you our changes to Survival Mode – how they work and why we added them. We’ll be somewhat vague about the specifics of certain things because we’re looking forward to you discovering them on your own and with each other.

If you’re playing Fallout 4, you can jump onto Steam and grab the Survival Mode Beta. Try it out and be sure to send us feedback in our Survival Mode Beta forum! Some of the items discussed below may change or may have already changed. Watch your step…

Tough Choices
At a high level, we wanted to force you to make interesting choices. We did that by bringing more contrasting motivations to Fallout 4 using the type of circular systems you might find in a game like Dark Souls. (By which we mean, two or more systems that push against each other.) This resulted in four major pillars for Survival Mode.

Strategy: Intensify decisions involving when to get into combat versus when to avoid it, and also make you think more about what gear to take into combat. Then back up those decisions with faster, more brutal fights.

Exploration: Slow down the pace of the game and encourage players to explore the nooks and crannies of the world.

Resource Management: Balance out items in the world that may be too easy to acquire or horde, giving players more to consider when planning their current loadout.

Role Playing: Increase the realism of the world and the issues one might face there. Here’s how these goals are realized with some of the big changes in Survival Mode.

Saving with Sleep: Manual, quicksaving and almost all autosaves are disabled. To save your game, you'll need to find a bed and sleep for at least an hour. This means your fallback options are reduced, forcing you to be more concerned about what you are walking into and whether you’re prepared to handle it. Some fights you may deem above your level and decide to avoid. Other fights you may decide to go all in. Scouting and gathering information to make this decision can be fun in its own right. Also, when beds are your only means of saving, they become the Holy Grail. With that level of importance tied to them, you will scour the Earth to find the closest bed to your next chosen encounter – and in doing so you will likely discover things that you might have otherwise missed.

No More Fast Travel: Fast Travel is disabled. If you wish to be somewhere, you'll have to get there the old-fashioned way. In other words, exploration is now mandatory, exposing more of the Commonwealth’s secret gems. This will also take you out of your comfort zone, but encourage you to take advantage of the well-placed workshops throughout the Wasteland. And, while Charisma may seem less important to your immediate survival, there are certain Charisma-based perks that make managing your bases less painful.

Increased Lethality: You now deal, but also take, more damage. You can increase the damage you deal even further with "Adrenaline" – more on that in a moment. This makes combat more dangerous, which in turn slows you down and gets you to think about what you’re walking into. Combine this with it being much harder to save your game and suddenly each encounter becomes much more tense and dire.

Combat itself is also more strategic, because both you and enemies are more powerful; this means fights are about trying to use positioning and timing to get in your shots without taking enemy hits. This has an even bigger effect on melee players, who will now need to use their block/parry to keep themselves from taking damage during fights. While this change raises the skill necessary to play, those who opt into Survival know what they’re getting into.

Facing the Unknown: Threats, unless added by a Recon scope, no longer display on the compass, and the distance at which locations of interest will appear has been significantly shortened. You can no longer rush through the world, knowing what’s around the next corner. At the same time, you’ll likely explore even more, in order to ferret out any and all locations.

Adrenaline: Adrenaline, a new Perk that comes standard with Survival Mode, provides a bonus to your damage output and is increased by getting kills. Every five kills increases your Adrenaline rank, adding 5% bonus damage for up to an extra 50% damage at the max rank of 10. That extra damage is alluring. Adrenaline motivates the types of stupid decisions that always lead to the best water cooler stories. (Sleeping removes anywhere from 2 to all 10 ranks of Adrenaline, depending on the time you’ve slept.)

Wellness – Exhaustion, Hunger, Thirst: You'll find it difficult to survive without taking proper care of yourself. You must stay hydrated, fed and rested to remain combat-ready. Going for extended periods of time without food, water or a good night's sleep will begin to adversely affect your health, hurting your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, adding to your Fatigue, lowering your immunity, and eventually even causing physical damage to you. This will affect every decision you make, because you have to consider your overall and ever-changing health. The drive to simply stay alive might push you into new and unexpected adventures. At the very least, you’ll likely find yourself hunting for valuable meats, triggering encounters with dangerous wildlife. But not everything you can consume is good for you: Certain items in the game now have negative consequences to balance out their positive effects. These counter-effects may make you thirsty, hungry or tired and possibly even hurt your immunity, leaving you vulnerable to Illness.

Fatigue: Fatigue mostly comes from being tired, but both hunger and thirst also affect it. Fatigue works like radiation, but affects your Action Points (AP) rather than your Hit Points (HP). The more Fatigue you've built up, the less AP you'll have for actions like sprinting and V.A.T.S. The amount of Fatigue you've accumulated is displayed in red on your AP bar.

Everything Matters
It’s not just the big changes that alter the way you play in Survival Mode. We also made adjustments to all kinds of items and conditions.

Bed Types: The type of bed you're sleeping in limits the length of time you are able to sleep, thereby limiting how much you can recover. Real beds – which are hard to come by in the world – offer the highest bonuses for sleeping; this rewards you for working out of a home base or even spending the caps for a good night’s sleep.

Also, finding a sleeping bag in the middle of a dungeon will feel great… finding a dirty mattress will feel even better… finding a real bed will be like winning the lottery. You know all those spots where you can use Workshop mode in the game? It’s time to start building beds.

Illness & Antibiotics: There are several different Illnesses that can affect you. Your base chance of getting sick increases as your average Wellness decreases. Antibiotics can be crafted, bought or found, and alongside doctors, can heal your current Illnesses. Certain things in the world, such as taking hits by certain creatures or using Chems, may immediately give you an Illness. Also, Stimpaks are no longer the fix-all miracle drug, so make sure you’re prepared!

Immunodeficiency: Items that cleanse your body of Rads come with the cost of making you tired and temporarily damaging your immunity, leaving you more vulnerable to Illness than usual. By adding a negative effect to RadAway, we are pushing you to only use it when you really need it.

Slower Healing: In Survival, restorative items, like Stimpaks and food, recover your health at a significantly reduced rate. You'll need to time your healing precisely if you hope it will last.

Crippled Limbs: Crippled limbs will no longer auto-heal after combat. They will remain crippled until healed by a Stimpak or slept off. This not only makes combat tougher (and more strategic) but also puts a further tax on Stimpaks.

Carry Weight: Your total carry weight has been reduced and items like ammo and Stimpaks now have weight. Bullets and shells have a small amount of weight, which varies by caliber, while missiles and mini nukes are quite heavy. Everything you carry now must be carefully chosen, and you’ll have to weigh power over volume when it comes to things like ammo.

Painful Encumbrance: Exceeding your carry weight reduces your overall Wellness, quickly building Fatigue, and will eventually cripple your legs. You can’t hoard a whole bunch of items, then make the long, slow trip back home – which, to be fair, isn’t that fun. Just set the loot aside and be free.

Companion Costs: Carry weight for companions has been decreased and they will no longer automatically get back up if downed during combat. Instead, they will return home, if abandoned without being healed. So don’t hog your Stimpaks, and don’t turn your friends into mules!

Likewise, if you’ve already downloaded Automatron, your new Robot companions will need to be closely monitored. If you forget to use your Robot Repair Kits, they will return home.

Enemy and Loot Repopulation: Locations you've cleared will now repopulate with new enemies and loot at a significantly slower rate. So head out into the world and find new locations!

There's even more depth and little things in the new Survival Mode for you to discover. Try out the beta on Steam and send us your feedback. We'd like to refine it with your help, make it the most exciting way to play, and then release it on all platforms. Thanks again!"

Thoughts?
 
The disabling of game saves makes this completely useless unless that feature can be individually disabled.

I also assume that they are making the enemies even bigger bullet sponges, which is also not fun at all.

I do appreciate what they are trying to do though and I'm glad to see some kind of Survival Mode. But yea not using it if it forces you to disable saving or if enemies become even bigger bullet sponges.
 
mm...i was expecting fallout: dust like content, but this is just okay i feel. dat saves disable feature though, unless they give solution when bug strikes i'm not gonna endorse it
 
The disabling of game saves makes this completely useless unless that feature can be individually disabled.

I also assume that they are making the enemies even bigger bullet sponges, which is also not fun at all.

I do appreciate what they are trying to do though and I'm glad to see some kind of Survival Mode. But yea not using it if it forces you to disable saving or if enemies become even bigger bullet sponges.

Nah, you do more damage as well now, so a bloatfly at the start goes down in one hit from a 10mm pistol now, not two like in original survival. Regardless, the saving only while sleeping thing (which seems to be autosaves, and while I've personally never had autosaves corrupt, I know MANY others have, not so sure that's a great idea, Beth...) kills it dead for me. If they'd at least done something like have a feature where you can save and immediately exit it might have been less tedious, but I can't always guarantee I'll be in a position to actually walk all the way to a bed just to save.
 
Even Bethfans complained about having to fast-travel back and from your settlement to bring resources around and craft shit. No fast-travel sounds like it would make an already tedious part of the game even more tedious. I mean, any player that ain't cheating and want to focus on settlement building (for whatever possible reason) and play on Survival Mode is pretty much screwed over.
 
Role Playing: Increase the realism of the world and the issues one might face there. Here’s how these goals are realized with some of the big changes in Survival Mode.
:lmao:
How the fuck are they going to do that? I don't think they realise how gimped Fallout 4 is in term of role-playing, unless they mean role-playing as in "shooting something with a specific type of gun.", god I don't know how they so thoroughly fucked up Fallout.
 
So one pays top dollar up front for any future DLC that might be created, only to have to beta test the bugs out of it first? Fuck you Bethesda.

Also, how the fuck does a post-apocalyptic game NOT have a survival mode to begin with? If you are not already surviving in the base game, what the fuck are you doing? Living? Pfft.

Role Playing: Increase the realism of the world and the issues one might face there.
I was pretty sure Hines was not interested at all in discussing REALISM in a game with talking ghouls? You are nothing but a filthy liar Pete.

"BethPlay: By Morons, For Morons."
 
Last edited:
Oh yeah....the save thing is a huge deal breaker for me considering how a buggy mess Bethesda games are.

Then the wonderful fast travel disabled bullshit, oh boy more walking simulator! Should've done traveling the way Fallout 1 and 2 did it, wait the fans say "itz moar realistic walking everywhere in first persons!". Wait then you have ol Petey talking about not wanting to discuss realism in their huge steaming colossal horse turd of a game.
 
How the fuck are they going to do that? I don't think they realise how gimped Fallout 4 is in term of role-playing, unless they mean role-playing as in "shooting something with a specific type of gun.", god I don't know how they so thoroughly fucked up Fallout.
"If you want to go pick flowers and make potions all day, then that's what you're roleplaying. If you want to shoot stuff in the head with a laser musket, then that's what you're roleplaying"
- Pete Hines, the Vice President of Bethesda Softworks, and head of Marketing and Public Relations.
 
I'm unsure as to the attitudes of the actual developers sitting at the computers coding [gecking?] the game and it's expansions. They can not possibly be party to taking Fallout 4 in this direction can they? This whole thing smacks of marketing decisions through and through. Has anyone gone though the credits and checked them to previous games? Are they vastly different?

If I was working there and was faced with this personally moral dilemma, I'd quit in disgust then spill the beans on tor.

[or if I was a real prick, maybe just spill the beans on tor and keep getting a paycheck while making a half-assed game :P ]
 
If I was working there...
Name: kraag
Location: Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
Title: Environmental Story Writer
Responsibilities: Write engaging stories for skeletons and teddy bears.
Last words at Bethesda: "You guys told me to tell stories with fucking skeletons and teddy bears, you never told me that that would be the main quest. Why!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Jesus, is there a Pete Hines appreciation or quote thread anywhere? That guy says stupid shit faster than a snow cone melts in hell.
I considered this, or one for Todd, but decided to stick with Emil as I have the strongest feeling for that clown. Pete Hines is an idiot, this is clear, but I don't know if there is enough variety to have a "big forum" dedicated to his glory. Perhaps.

It is interesting though if you think about the three amigos, their duty and their skill. Emil's responsibility is to design Fallout games under the latest owner Bethesda. He does this, but not very well.
Pete Hines is Public Relations for Bethesda Games Studios, yet he never gets an answer before opening his big mouth, he does more damage to the company then good, Matt Grandstaff should get that position, he seems smart and down to earth and actually plays Fallout games. GStaff also seems to get along with fans and non-fans alike and isn't known for saying stupid shit.
Todd's role is to be the producer I guess and the talking head or 'posterboy" for the franchise, much like Elder Scrolls. What is his part in all this? Just producing it? Well, I guess he's the only amigo doing well considering that people continue to buy Sellout 4 and all their broken games.
 
Last edited:
their huge steaming colossal horse turd of a game.

Hey, come on man, don't insult horse turds. Horse droppings are actually extremely useful considering they can be used as a very potent fertilizer for crops/flowers/trees/fruits. Horse turds are actually only 2nd in use as fertilizer behind cow turds. Basically without horse shit we wouldn't be able to grow nearly as many things as we do. Plus, if you're extremely desperate in a survival situation, horse shit IS edible.

Fallout 4 on the other hand does not give nourishment to our bodies or our minds, it only takes. Unlike horse shit you can't even eat it. If I were stuck on a desert island and had the choice between a PC with only access to FO4, and a big pile of horse turds, I'd take the horse turds.
 
Quite a long press release. Might be time to work on another blog post.

I really can't wrap my head around the free pass BGS gets in the gaming community, they are finishing the base game on the fucking fly. This POS should be in Early Access.

Yeah, that's bullshit. Taking 70-80% of each new sale and then months later patching in ideas they didn't even think of planning for pre-release, even though there was a lot of positive feedback about Hardcore Mode.
 
If I were stuck on a desert island and had the choice between a PC with only access to FO4, and a big pile of horse turds, I'd take the horse turds.
Snake has mentioned, huge and steaming which would also have real benefits.

Depending on how huge the turd is, it is conceivable that one could make residence and shelter, also, if it is steaming that would mean that it is providing warmth and heat. Sounds pretty cozy to me right now.

If I was stuck in the arctic and I had a choice of either Fallout 4 on any platform, or a huge steaming horse turd, I as well would gladly take the turd. You can eat it, make a house out of it. It can warm your family and you could even make pottery for your friends and family.
 
I kind of like that Bethesda's giving out stuff for free.

And it's a good thing this is in beta testing so we can iron out the things we don't like.
 
Back
Top