Mods/GECK will fix it. Nope.

I just don't buy into the whole "lazy devs" school of thought . These dudes (dudettes) pull some long hours and many of them have no choice in what they do. Now they might try to skate by with less quests while focusing on other aspects of the game. That is more likely. They already knew people would buy it. Now they can sell more content with DLC and modding tools and people will love them for it...in theory.
 
As usual, Toront, the voice of reason is right.

However, without the intention to blame the "normal" office drone at Bethesda, the problem might have been missmanagament. As long we don't have someone who has worked inside of Bethesda, we will never know for sure. But I would not be surprised if the place can be a real hell if you get to Todd, Emil or Pete, and the tell you to do something that you know is so shitty that you would never use it (the UI), but ... you have to make it anway. Because they like it that way! And marketing also says, flashy graphics sell awesome.
 
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TorontRayne said:
I just don't buy into the whole "lazy devs" school of thought . These dudes (dudettes) pull some long hours and many of them have no choice in what they do. Now they might try to skate by with less quests while focusing on other aspects of the game. That is more likely. They already knew people would buy it. Now they can sell more content with DLC and modding tools and people will love them for it...in theory.
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The game feels a lot like design by committee, and anyone who's had to sit through a "how to improve the office atmosphere" meeting knows how that goes. I could be wrong though and Bethesda is just using the infinite monkey theorem, in which case the game is a masterpiece.
 
I am still convinced this game was pushed out the door in less than 2 years. I went back to it once after installing some mods, and some of the shit I have seen is just ridiculous....
 
You realize no one takes the lazy dev view seriously? It's just the amount of quality effort put in this game is staggering... because there is none.
 
Walpknut said:
I am still convinced this game was pushed out the door in less than 2 years. I went back to it once after installing some mods, and some of the shit I have seen is just ridiculous....
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Well if you say 2 years of pre-production and 2 years of dev time that might be true. I could definitely see that. 4 years total. Definitely not the 7 years they pulled out of their ass.
 
TorontRayne said:
Walpknut said:
I am still convinced this game was pushed out the door in less than 2 years. I went back to it once after installing some mods, and some of the shit I have seen is just ridiculous....
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Well if you say 2 years of pre-production and 2 years of dev time that might be true. I could definitely see that. 4 years total. Definitely not the 7 years they pulled out of their ass.
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Todd does like to harness those sweet little lies.
 
7 years over stretched resources and bad prioritising can give as much results as 4 years of focus and a clear objective. Why do you think all the business tips are all about scheduling properly and organising yourself? Fallout 4 is what happens when you don't.

I think they geniunely think that they spent all of the 7 years on it. The opposite of productive, but I'm sure at least the number is correct.
 
ZigzagPX4 said:
7 years over stretched resources and bad prioritising can give as much results as 4 years of focus and a clear objective. Why do you think all the business tips are all about scheduling properly and organising yourself? Fallout 4 is what happens when you don't.

I think they geniunely think that they spent all of the 7 years on it. The opposite of productive, but I'm sure at least the number is correct.
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So they spent 3 years wasting their time...
 
So Bethesda does in 7 years what Obsidian could do in 1 or 2. Sounds legit.
 
I think it is more likely that they simply didn't started full production of NuFallout4, maybe even not before 2012 or 2013 even. And beeing for 2-3 years in crunch time. Is it so unlikely? Consider this, Todd himself said that he is proud about what his team is doing while it is so small compared to current industry standards. I guess he must be talking about Rockstar and EA, can't be Obsidian or even independed developers, which have even smaller teams than he does. And I guess when he says 100 people it is probably more like 70 or even less, since in gaming it is very common to hire freelancers. But I digress, again, it is all just a guess.

If he says that they worked 7 years on it, than I even believe him! Their concept artists probably started to work on Fallout 4 as early as 2008 or 9 eventually, before Skyrim was anounced, while their core development team didn't start anything Fallout related before the last DLC the first Dragonborn was shiped. Which was for PC in 2013! Remember, Skyrim didn't saw much support during that time either. Who knows? Maybe one of the reasons why they even decided to hire another team. We can not know this for sure of course, but it would not surprise me if those last 3 years have changed something here. Definetly not so much that they want to suddenly make true RPGs, but enough to realize that they hit a limit somewhere.

Oh, I am pretty sure, just like Toront, that they are NOT lazy developers! I would even say quite the oposite! A relatively small team, some missanamagent here and there, with wrong priorities and project leaders like Todd, Emil and Pete that I consider walking suits, only interested in sales numbers, and not game developers. Not much of a surprise Fallout 4 really ended up as what it is today.
 
Chances are the employees simply do what Todd says because it's likely that what ever he says goes and as long as it's in "Todd's vision" these ideas are allowed. If that's true then it would be like what I was hearing about with George Lucas not being given any criticism when the Star Wars prequels were being created which resulted in...well you know the rest.
 
TorontRayne said:
So Bethesda does in 7 years what Obsidian could do in 1 or 2. Sounds legit.
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Yes it does. Just look at Duke Nukem Forever, or Half Life 3, different situations mean different development durations, Bethesda really are just dumb enough to spend 7 years on one thing, it's the way they are :seriouslyno:
 
Crni Vuk said:
if you get to Todd, Emil or Pete, and the tell you to do something that you know is so shitty that you would never use it (the UI), but ... you have to make it anyway. Because they like it that way!
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Hit the nail on the head there. I find it hard to believe that all these glaring issues, lore blunders and lack of replay-ability were not addressed. Just like the questions to Pete, he says "you can't make 100% of the people happy." Which is true, but it doesn't hurt to try. They made what they wanted, they are happy with the end result, if you don't like it, oh well. I am going to guess that was the attitude in the office too. "This is what we are doing, you don't have to like it."
 
I'll wait to see if someone or a group ports NV to F4. Just erase F4, input NV, and you have NV will slightly more colorful graphics, armor that doesn't look like shit, and the shooty-shoot ID software mechanics bringing NV up to so called "modern" Beth engine standards if people can't stand to play NV in Beth's less 'modern' shit Gamebryo engine.
 
DirtyOldShoe said:
Taskeen said:
I'll wait to see if someone or a group ports NV to F4.
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You will be waiting a while, considering a team of over 100 people have been struggling to do that for Morrowind since Oblivion. Bring some popcorn!
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Yeah, it would take forever no doubt. I'm not holding my breath though. I have way to many other solid games to play and do not intend to buy FO4. Its the best possible situation to be in rather than being an FO4 purchaser with buyer's remorse.
 
Taskeen said:
I'll wait to see if someone or a group ports NV to F4. Just erase F4, input NV, and you have NV will slightly more colorful graphics, armor that doesn't look like shit, and the shooty-shoot ID software mechanics bringing NV up to so called "modern" Beth engine standards if people can't stand to play NV in Beth's less 'modern' shit Gamebryo engine.
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If only. We can dream, but that project would never finish.
 
The painful thing is that the intense mod culture is sort of unique to Bethesda's games, which means moving to one of Zenimax's other subsidiaries' game engines could reduce the freedom of modding capabilities.

While I know everyone here is willing to sacrifice modding for a stable, well-performing game with balanced mechanics, I don't think the majority of Bethesda fans will. It's a large part of what makes Bethesda games still popular.

And I have to admit, I'm not too happy sacrificing player content for a slightly less crashy game either. But we'll see how it goes.

And before you say "why not both", the Gamebryo variants Bethesda uses are some of the best engines for modding. It would be difficult to find another engine that balances both performance, quality, current-gen tech and full modding capabilities.
 
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