Why are battles so small?

Well, you can bend any engine only so much before it starts to run into issues. And as someone else once explained, Bethesda is not making engines or doing lots of tech-stuff. They design content and visuals. Updating already existing assets. And when you think about it, Fallout 4 is in many ways a Fallout 3 with new paint job thrown over it.
 
I don't think it's as bad as Source 2013 still using the same editor that Quake used.

Actually, no, I take that back. Both Source and the Quake engine are magnificent engines.
 
Ben Soto said:
I don't think it's as bad as Source 2013 still using the same editor that Quake used.

Actually, no, I take that back. Both Source and the Quake engine are magnificent engines.
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At least Valve is finally making a new engine
 
Another thing to consider when it comes to huge battles in games like this, in addition to the aforementioned engine limitations. I recently did some tests, using a computer that could run large scale battles smoothly, with Oblivion, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim. I first spawned two opposing groups of NPCs not much larger than the groups you'd encounter in the vanilla game. Went pretty well and playing through it was good gameplay. Afterwards, I spawned an absurd number of NPCs and tried the scenario again. In all three games, the same behavior was observed: it was a mess and barely felt like a battle. The AI simply isn't programmed to work on scenarios with so many enemies, and so you get a bunch of NPCs just bumping into each other, shooting at nothing, running forward and pushing their allies, with only a few actually being positioned well enough to really fight the other side... at that point it just breaks the player's immersion and gameplay because the battle isn't working at all. I haven't done this in Fallout 4, but I imagine you would get similar results.

What I'm trying to say here is that if NPC combat behavior isn't made with large scale battles already in mind, they don't work really well at all. You CAN make them happen, but it's hardly interesting gameplay because you'll be paying more attention to the inane strategies employed by the AI than actually enjoying it. Now, there are games which have huge battles and it works, but that's because they were, logically, made with those battles already in mind. The current Fallout games aren't supposed to have so many NPCs in the same field so they just act awkwardly when placed there. Couple that with the fact most consoles and PCs would never be able to render that many actors smoothly and you understand why it's not technically feasible.
 
I agree with Stone Cold Robert House. The AI is the biggest issue here, it simply doesn't work well with big battles. The NPCs don't take proper cover (or at least they don't stay in it; they just love charging at you as soon as possible), they don't do suppressing fire, they don't really do flanking maneuvers. They're supposed to fight one-on-one, more or less, and tactical decisions for large groups work way different than for really small groups.
But I guess that's a problem for all games, not just Fallout 4; simulating a large, modern battle is exceptionally hard, I imagine.
 
Hassknecht said:
I agree with Stone Cold Robert House. The AI is the biggest issue here, it simply doesn't work well with big battles. The NPCs don't take proper cover (or at least they don't stay in it; they just love charging at you as soon as possible), they don't do suppressing fire, they don't really do flanking maneuvers. They're supposed to fight one-on-one, more or less, and tactical decisions for large groups work way different than for really small groups.
But I guess that's a problem for all games, not just Fallout 4; simulating a large, modern battle is exceptionally hard, I imagine.
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I find games that compartmentalize large battles work really well, imo. Dragon Age Origins comes to mind, while not perfect the end game still felt like a smaller part of a large battle and not a 5v5 pve like Bethesda makes.
 
KillerBee256 said:
Crni Vuk said:
Well, old stuff by now ... but I think big battles simply look totally ugly in Bethesda games.

As it can be seen here.

Deathclaws vs Diamond city. Shitty animations.

Someone also posted, Liberty Prime vs Everything ... urgh. Uglyness to the power of 10.

Goty? Thankefully not ...
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Those videos are just depressing, what Bethesda's fan base likes is the antithesis of what fallout use to be.
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Am I the only one that found those videos boring to watch?
 
MercenarySnake said:
KillerBee256 said:
Crni Vuk said:
Well, old stuff by now ... but I think big battles simply look totally ugly in Bethesda games.

As it can be seen here.

Deathclaws vs Diamond city. Shitty animations.

Someone also posted, Liberty Prime vs Everything ... urgh. Uglyness to the power of 10.

Goty? Thankefully not ...
Click to expand...
Those videos are just depressing, what Bethesda's fan base likes is the antithesis of what fallout use to be.
Click to expand...

Am I the only one that found those videos boring to watch?
Click to expand...

The only thing redeeming about Liberty Prime's video is that Frank Klepacki's Hell March is an amazing song, so I could bear to watch most of it.
 
Khannis said:
MercenarySnake said:
KillerBee256 said:
Crni Vuk said:
Well, old stuff by now ... but I think big battles simply look totally ugly in Bethesda games.

As it can be seen here.

Deathclaws vs Diamond city. Shitty animations.

Someone also posted, Liberty Prime vs Everything ... urgh. Uglyness to the power of 10.

Goty? Thankefully not ...
Click to expand...
Those videos are just depressing, what Bethesda's fan base likes is the antithesis of what fallout use to be.
Click to expand...

Am I the only one that found those videos boring to watch?
Click to expand...

The only thing redeeming about Liberty Prime's video is that Frank Klepacki's Hell March is an amazing song, so I could bear to watch most of it.
Click to expand...

That video didn't do that song any sort of justice.
 
Someguy37 said:
saying Fallout 4 uses the same engine as Morrowind is like saying Bioshock Infinite uses the same engine as Unreal(1998) becuase they both use versions of the Unreal engine.
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Unreal Engine 1 and Unreal Engine 4 are completely different and are several generations apart. The Gamebryo engine that Bethesda is still using, on the other hand, is the exact same engine as the one they used on Morrowind, albeit with modifications.
 
Khannis said:
The only thing redeeming about Liberty Prime's video is that Frank Klepacki's Hell March is an amazing song, so I could bear to watch most of it.
Click to expand...

Red alert had great battle, for the time. Now we look at Total War. (Or more TW DLC...)

Sadly the artefacting audio gave me a headache (in the video).


Edit : What's hilarious about the netimmerse/gamebryo/creation engine is that, if Bethesda didn't named it Creation Engine for Skyrim and named it for Fallout 4, people would still argue the same thing. xD
 
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