New here, and may I just ask a stupid question for once?

[Spacemunkey]

In case you needed visual aids op.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

I won't come right out and say it's a bad game, since "bad game/good game" is generally shorthand for "game I disliked/game I liked" (possibly with reasons for either) anyway. I just know that it's not really a game that connects with me, it's even a game that connects with me less than Fallout 3 did, and that's saying something.

I agree. Fallout 4 is not necessarily "bad" nor is it "good" but I think it is a fair assessment to say its a mediocre game. Everything that it does, there is another game that does it better.

I wanted an RPG - so I dropped F4 and started playing better RPGs such as Witcher or Mass Effect or Pillars of Eternity or Wasteland 2. In the same way, if I wanted a first person shooter in a post-apocalyptic setting, I'd go back to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Metro. If I wanted to play Minecraft, well I'd play Minecraft. If I wanted to play a mindless, repetitive shooter in a post-apocalyptic-type of Fallot setting with mindless upgrade systems, I'd go play Borderlands. If I wanted another FPS with great writing in addition to Stalker and Metro, with decent characters and story - Wolfenstein: The New Order. And lastly, if I wanted to play Far Cry I'd go play that.

The point of all this being that Fallout 4 should have stuck with its RPG roots because there is no way they were going to make this game compete with the likes of the aforementioned games in their areas of expertise, especially on that old Gamebryo engine, and because if I wanted to play those kinds of games I would just go play them instead of Fallout 4.

 

[ZigzagPX4]

Ey, I liked Fallout 4. It wasn't perfect (that's giving it too much leeway, even), but it's not like this forum is hellpit of acid vomiting haters with no regards for anyone else's opinions. You don't get shot by the Brotherhood by not agreeing with them, you can get shot by the Brotherhood by walking into their bunker and telling them everything they do is wrong.

Why is it that no one can ever be able to act a little bit more subtle if they don't agree with the opinions here about Fallout 4? Why is always a kick-the-door attitude, "whyd'yallhatethisgreatassgame" kind of thing?

I won't come right out and say it's a bad game, since "bad game/good game" is generally shorthand for "game I disliked/game I liked" (possibly with reasons for either) anyway. I just know that it's not really a game that connects with me, it's even a game that connects with me less than Fallout 3 did, and that's saying something.

I agree. Fallout 4 is not necessarily "bad" nor is it "good" but I think it is a fair assessment to say its a mediocre game. Everything that it does, there is another game that does it better.

I wanted an RPG - so I dropped F4 and started playing better RPGs such as Witcher or Mass Effect or Pillars of Eternity or Wasteland 2. In the same way, if I wanted a first person shooter in a post-apocalyptic setting, I'd go back to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Metro. If I wanted to play Minecraft, well I'd play Minecraft. If I wanted to play a mindless, repetitive shooter in a post-apocalyptic-type of Fallot setting with mindless upgrade systems, I'd go play Borderlands. If I wanted another FPS with great writing in addition to Stalker and Metro, with decent characters and story - Wolfenstein: The New Order. And lastly, if I wanted to play Far Cry I'd go play that.

The point of all this being that Fallout 4 should have stuck with its RPG roots because there is no way they were going to make this game compete with the likes of the aforementioned games in their areas of expertise, especially on that old Gamebryo engine, and because if I wanted to play those kinds of games I would just go play them instead of Fallout 4.

See, here's the thing. What if someone doesn't want a game with excellent focus in certain aspects, but equal average focus in many aspects? What if people like quantity over quality? It's like when you don't know what you want to eat when you're hungry, so you go for fast food, which is neither nutritious nor scrumptious, but it's a wide variety menu of vastly different things that feels somewhat fulfilling.

It's fun because it's a hybrid of many different games, giving you a small taste of everything rather than a big taste of one thing.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

See, here's the thing. What if someone doesn't want a game with excellent focus in certain aspects, but equal average focus in many aspects? What if people like quantity over quality?

It's fun because it's a hybrid of many different games, giving you a small taste of everything rather than a big taste of one thing.

Then those people who want a game that is mediocre at everything and great at nothing, that is "ok" for everyone and "amazing" for no one will be completely satisfied. Good for them.

I sincerely doubt that is what most Fallout fans really wanted with this series.

 

[DirtyOldShoe]

I would like a list of videos like this if anyone has one, I tried searching but my google powers are not as strong as they used to be, Thanks for the vid!

 

[ZigzagPX4]

See, here's the thing. What if someone doesn't want a game with excellent focus in certain aspects, but equal average focus in many aspects? What if people like quantity over quality?

It's fun because it's a hybrid of many different games, giving you a small taste of everything rather than a big taste of one thing.

Then those people who want a game that is mediocre at everything and great at nothing, that is "ok" for everyone and "amazing" for no one will be completely satisfied. Good for them.

I sincerely doubt that is what most Fallout fans really wanted with this series.

Not talking about Fallout as a series. I would rather there be a video game series that exist for this sole purpose, even if isn't Fallout. A jack-of-all-trades, of sorts. Bethesda has proved there's a market that wants them - even if not Fallout, shouldn't something like this exist to some extent?

 

[Walpknut]

There is gonna be one, but it's gonna be in spanish. I might do english versions of the videos if the views are good enough.

 

[Spacemunkey]

I would like a list of videos like this if anyone has one, I tried searching but my google powers are not as strong as they used to be, Thanks for the vid!

I'm subscribed to Top Hats and Champagne, another one is Ethos "why I stopped playing Fallout 4" and his "Fallout 4 review". The first is his critique of FO4 being optimized poorly.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

See, here's the thing. What if someone doesn't want a game with excellent focus in certain aspects, but equal average focus in many aspects? What if people like quantity over quality?

It's fun because it's a hybrid of many different games, giving you a small taste of everything rather than a big taste of one thing.

Then those people who want a game that is mediocre at everything and great at nothing, that is "ok" for everyone and "amazing" for no one will be completely satisfied. Good for them.

I sincerely doubt that is what most Fallout fans really wanted with this series.

Not talking about Fallout as a series. I would rather there be a video game series that exist for this sole purpose, even if isn't Fallout. A jack-of-all-trades, of sorts. Bethesda has proved there's a market that wants them - even if not Fallout, shouldn't something like this exist to some extent?

Sure. Why not? It would be un-American not to promote this sort of creativity.

But as I said I sincerely doubt most Fallout fans wanted this from Fallout. We had waited 5 years since New Vegas and 7 Years since Fallout 3, and in that time had weathered many mediocre AAA games that put out the same kind of game over and over again. And we were looking forward to Fallout because it would give us that something that was missing from all those games. And instead what we received was some kind of mediocre amalgamation of all the other AAA games that had nothing to do with a Role Playing Game and had more in common with those other mediocre games like Borderlands than with previous Fallout games.

 

[Walpknut]

Jacks of all trade games are never good, instead of a focused, well designed product you end up with a bunch of disconnected, shallow mechanics fighting for attention. Also, Bethesda isn't breaking any new ground here, they are just making an offline MMO, something their games have been moving towards for a while. These are games made to fill space, without caring for filling it with any meaningfull content. They are like a heroin shot.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Bethesda isn't breaking any new ground here, they are just making an offline MMO

That summarizes my experience with Fallout 4 perfectly.

 

[Walpknut]

Howard himself said they took inspiration from Destiny, which is an fps MMO based entirely on repetitive looting and hordes.

 

[PossibleCabbage]

See, here's the thing. What if someone doesn't want a game with excellent focus in certain aspects, but equal average focus in many aspects? What if people like quantity over quality? It's like when you don't know what you want to eat when you're hungry, so you go for fast food, which is neither nutritious nor scrumptious, but it's a wide variety menu of vastly different things that feels somewhat fulfilling.

It's fun because it's a hybrid of many different games, giving you a small taste of everything rather than a big taste of one thing.

I think a big part of what makes Bethesda games is that they are, for many, immersive because you can go from one thing to do to another thing to do. In this regard, I feel like Skyrim is a a good example as you can flit from killing monsters in a dungeon, to mining, to making jewelry, to robbing houses, to harvesting, to hunting, to cooking and it was all reasonably seemless and it worked because you could ask the question of "what would I like to do now."

I think in many ways what hurts Fallout here is that the Commonwealth is simply not as alive as Tamriel (what with the nuclear war, this makes sense) and the place is insufficiently civilized so a lot of what it asks you to do is to make it less alive. So a lot of the comparable activities seem less natural and more forced. Like take settlement building for example, if it's that easy to just place a well and get people to come and farm the land for you, why hasn't someone else already done this and what are all these aspiring farmers doing until you come along? Having to flesh out the world yourself kind of makes it seem more artificial.

 

[ZigzagPX4]

I think that - as someone who didn't hate Fallout 4 - most fans of Bethesda games basically want the perfect cross between STALKER, DayZ, and Deus Ex. Try and imagine it. That's what Bethesda are aiming for, and what they're not getting to, regardless of what the majority of NMA consider is a good Fallout game.

Bethesda isn't breaking any new ground here, they are just making an offline MMO

That summarizes my experience with Fallout 4 perfectly.

I'm still not seeing why the majority of non-original fans wouldn't like it.

Howard himself said they took inspiration from Destiny, which is an fps MMO based entirely on repetitive looting and hordes.

Destiny and Borderlands, while seemingly failed potential to dedicated RPG fans, are great multiplayer games. They're not necessarily shit games for being repetitive.
Repetition isn't something that needs to go away, completely, forever. CS:GO is world famous, yet it's the same map, the same gameplay, the same mechanics, again and again. See what kind of dynamic multiplayer games go for?

Jacks of all trade games are never good, instead of a focused, well designed product you end up with a bunch of disconnected, shallow mechanics fighting for attention. Also, Bethesda isn't breaking any new ground here, they are just making an offline MMO, something their games have been moving towards for a while. These are games made to fill space, without caring for filling it with any meaningfull content. They are like a heroin shot.

I very strongly disagree with that. While I see your point in games like Dragon Age: Inquisition, where it feels like a true offline MMO in that well-written quests are interspersed with boring, mind-numbing fetch quests or dreary clear-dungeon quests, I was referring more to fitting a multi-genre game. If every stealth game was hardcore stealth like original Splinter Cell games, gaming as whole would get stale very, very quickly.

To allow people that enjoy different genres to enjoy the same game is an excellent and should-be-supported thing. Fallout 4 is a horrible example of how to go about this, but it CAN be a good game, if done right.
Garry's Mod remains as a very popular game not because of a sandbox YouTubers mess around in. It's because of the wide variety of many different gamemodes.

So no, Bethesda is not a good example, but their concept is done right. And even if not as a Fallout game, a jack-of-all-trades game executed perfectly can be a very satisfying experience for every kind of gamer.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

I think that - as someone who didn't hate Fallout 4 - most fans of Bethesda games basically want the perfect cross between STALKER, DayZ, and Deus Ex.

That sounds great, but Fallout 4 is none of these things. It's an offline MMO.

When you say "I still don't see why non-Fallout fans wouldn't like it" it presumes everyone who wasn't an original Fallout fan likes dumbed down shooters with repetitive MMO grinds. Fallout 4 is not even on the same planet as Deus Ex in terms of depth, nor Stalker nor Dayz. I am sure many, if not most, fans of Stalker and Deus Ex would find F4 to be a shallow, dumbed down offline MMO mess.

If there are new fans that like it - great. But no one should be surprised that the people who liked Fallout before now feel completely alienated and disappointed. And it should be no surprise that new players accustomed to deeper games also find it shallow.

 

[ZigzagPX4]

I think that - as someone who didn't hate Fallout 4 - most fans of Bethesda games basically want the perfect cross between STALKER, DayZ, and Deus Ex.

That sounds great, but Fallout 4 is none of these things. It's an offline MMO.

When you say "I still don't see why non-Fallout fans wouldn't like it" it presumes everyone who wasn't an original Fallout fan likes dumbed down shooters with repetitive MMO grinds. Fallout 4 is not even on the same planet as Deus Ex in terms of depth, nor Stalker nor Dayz.

Two completely different points, there. Repetitive grindfest loaded with gimmicks are in no way equal to an exploration RPG with multiple paths and organic gameplay.

Bethesda is aiming Fallout at becoming a cross between STALKER, DayZ, and Deus Ex, or similar. Whether it will get there or not, is a different matter. But if you imagine it, then it's easier to see which of their mistakes are. People assume they're trying to copy Borderlands and Destiny, whereas I assume that it's only a consequence of not having a clear plan of how to become that aforementioned cross of three great games.

Now about the non-Fallout fans, the market of people who likes dumbed down shooters and repetitive MMO grinds isn't exactly a small market. You know what, screw that, it's a massive one. As far as they're concerned, a post-apocalyptic Destiny without multiplayer is exactly what Fallout is. This is not a good thing, but people enjoy it.

While this is not what Fallout should be, games like this should not cease to exist.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

People assume they're trying to copy Borderlands and Destiny, whereas I assume that it's only a consequence of not having a clear plan of how to become that aforementioned cross of three great games.

That is not an assumption. Bethesda put out marketing articles claiming they took direct inspiration from Destiny.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-4-gunplay-modeled-after-destinys/1100-6431981/

 

[ZigzagPX4]

People assume they're trying to copy Borderlands and Destiny, whereas I assume that it's only a consequence of not having a clear plan of how to become that aforementioned cross of three great games.

That is not an assumption. Bethesda put out marketing articles claiming they took direct inspiration from Destiny.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-4-gunplay-modeled-after-destinys/1100-6431981/

If copying Destiny was the only thing they aim for, why would they bother keeping the other features at all? Why is it assumed they are deliberately trying to ruin the series, rather than taking inspiration from the wrong games?

Not to mention - in the article, they talk about taking the GUNPLAY from Destiny. Which you have to admit, made Fallout 4 much better than it could've been.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

People assume they're trying to copy Borderlands and Destiny, whereas I assume that it's only a consequence of not having a clear plan of how to become that aforementioned cross of three great games.

That is not an assumption. Bethesda put out marketing articles claiming they took direct inspiration from Destiny.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-4-gunplay-modeled-after-destinys/1100-6431981/

If copying Destiny was the only thing they aim for, why would they bother keeping the other features at all? Why is it assumed they are deliberately trying to ruin the series, rather than taking inspiration from the wrong games?

Not to mention - in the article, they talk about taking the GUNPLAY from Destiny. Which you have to admit, made Fallout 4 much better than it could've been.

Of course the gunplay was better. It is excellent in fact considering the previous games.

But um, yea this game is not even in the same league as Deus Ex or even Stalker. There are some areas that really do feel like Stalker like the Glowing Sea, but even Stalker has more dialogue options than Fallout 4. As for Deus Ex, I fail to see any resemblance whatsoever.

This game plays more like Borderlands than any of those games.

 

[Spacemunkey]

People assume they're trying to copy Borderlands and Destiny, whereas I assume that it's only a consequence of not having a clear plan of how to become that aforementioned cross of three great games.

That is not an assumption. Bethesda put out marketing articles claiming they took direct inspiration from Destiny.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-4-gunplay-modeled-after-destinys/1100-6431981/

It's this type of thing that makes me feel a little bad for Todd Howard, he may be the face of Bethesda but these money grab design choices are above his pay grade.