"Why I'm tired of Fallout 4 encumbrance"

[shengar]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-11-17-why-im-tired-of-fallout-4-encumbrance

And the slippery slope of Bethesda players demand of gameplay "streamlining" continue.

But I want the discussion expand further. I want to talk how so many people have such oxymoron demand like this. "We want our choices matter, as long as the consequences wouldn't weight our fun heavily", "Immersion! Until it gets in the way of our fun" stuffs like these are being repeated without end. Any game mechanics that become a hinder or "detriment" to these players "fun" are most likely dubbed as archaic. They never try to see the position of the said mechanic within the game and how it helps the game to reach its goal, shrugging it as a mere "annoyance" that should be removed. When the mechanic indeed does fail or flawed in execution, the solution is not to fix it to make better but to removed it completely.

I always wonder why these people play RPG in the first place.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Thing is, the people we are talking about, are like the kind of children that want only the bowl with the icing, and not bother with the rest of cake, not realizing that so much icing, will not be good for them and just cause belly aches.

Part of the appeal of Fallout 4 is it lets me role-play as a post-nuclear scavenger, picking the bones of Boston's 200 year-old corpse.

The really sad part is ... this is pretty much the ONLY role you can actually play in F4. Anything else, has to fitt the narrative. Don't want to play a caring father? Well! Sorry kido! The game doesn't allow you that.

 

[Doctor 0]

Hobo simulator.

 

[Magnus]

The really sad part is ... this is pretty much the ONLY role you can actually play in F4. Anything else, has to fitt the narrative. Don't want to play a caring father? Well! Sorry kido! The game doesn't allow you that.

I don't know about that. My "caring mother" is 100% not interested in finding her son. She hasn't mentioned him once since she told Codsworth he was kidnapped. All she does now is roam around the city streets looking for more and more fashionable clothes, while occasionally demanding hundreds of caps in return for promising to help people, only to skidaddle at the first opportunity. She's a sarcastic, opportunistic bastard, and so far the game has done a fine job of letting her be one.

 

[Crni Vuk]

That's not playing a role though, you just decided not to engage in the main quest. Once you get in to the main quest, bam! There you are again, caring mother looking for her child. I would be surprised if there is even one dialog in the game where your character has the option to say, that she/he's not caring to find the brat. Simply because the whole story would fall apart at that point.

There is just no way how you can't get out of it, as far as the narrative of the story and some quests goes. As said, you can decide for your self to go and run around collecting just junk in the wasteland with your robot. But, that has ultimately no bearing on how the main story or quests play out. And that's what makes role playing, well role playing, otherwise you're just playing a loot version of Doom or a mine craft with better graphics. That's always one of the big problems with Bethesda games, even since Morrowind - and I liked Morrowind for what it was, but it didn't allow you much role playing. Fallout 4 simply doesn't give you many chances for role playing outside of the rail roaded narrative and quest structure that the developers created for you as player.

To say it that way, most of the role playing just happens in your head, not in the game world.

I know that I am bit unfair right now, as most games even F1 and F2 have a relatively tight narrative when it comes to the Mc Guffin. And I guess your child as reason is as as good as everyhing else. The difference though, is that both F1 and F2 allowed you to play the game with a lot of nuances writen either in to the main quest or the side quests. Something that Fallout 4 doesn't really offer to you as the player, simply because of how limited and extremly narrow the dialog is in the game. Most of the options you have are either Kill enemy XYZ for us, or Don't do the quest now. Sometimes with a skill check to get more caps out of it.

And the moment you try even to steer away, evn just a little from it, it starts to fall apart. The game expects from you to peform certain actions, for example, a point where the game simply expects from you to have dog meat around and if you don't, he magically appears, or where certain options become only available if you have a certain NPC/Companion around - see Kellogs home and the investigation. Fallout 1 and 2 have been a lot more open in your choices, and the dialog of the game and NPC reaction reflected that.

 

[Magnus]

And the moment you try even to steer away, evn just a little from it, it starts to fall apart. The game expects from you to peform certain actions, for example, a point where the game simply expects from you to have dog meat around and if you don't, he magically appears, or where certain options become only available if you have a certain NPC/Companion around - see Kellogs home and the investigation. Fallout 1 and 2 have been a lot more open in your choices, and the dialog of the game and NPC reaction reflected that.

Okay, if they magically conjure up Dogmeat for you then YES, THAT IS BAD. My god, I hope there's some way to avoid that. Even if they had made me understand that "you need Dogmeat for this task" and made me schlepp all the way back to Red Rocket and get him, that would still have been a better solution. Although I'm curious as to why he is required... but please don't spoil it. My current character is absolutely not on board with having Dogmeat around (although I'll probably be using him with my next character), if they make having him a requirement in order to finish the main quest then so help me God I will make a mod that lets you do it without him.

 

[Monco]

And the moment you try even to steer away, evn just a little from it, it starts to fall apart. The game expects from you to peform certain actions, for example, a point where the game simply expects from you to have dog meat around and if you don't, he magically appears, or where certain options become only available if you have a certain NPC/Companion around - see Kellogs home and the investigation. Fallout 1 and 2 have been a lot more open in your choices, and the dialog of the game and NPC reaction reflected that.

Okay, if they magically conjure up Dogmeat for you then YES, THAT IS BAD. My god, I hope there's some way to avoid that. Even if they had made me understand that "you need Dogmeat for this task" and made me schlepp all the way back to Red Rocket and get him, that would still have been a better solution. Although I'm curious as to why he is required... but please don't spoil it. My current character is absolutely not on board with having Dogmeat around (although I'll probably be using him with my next character), if they make having him a requirement in order to finish the main quest then so help me God I will make a mod that lets you do it without him.

You have to use dogmeat to track somebody as part of the main quest, and yes if you don't have dogmeat with you he will magically appear in Diamond City

 

[Magnus]

And the moment you try even to steer away, evn just a little from it, it starts to fall apart. The game expects from you to peform certain actions, for example, a point where the game simply expects from you to have dog meat around and if you don't, he magically appears, or where certain options become only available if you have a certain NPC/Companion around - see Kellogs home and the investigation. Fallout 1 and 2 have been a lot more open in your choices, and the dialog of the game and NPC reaction reflected that.

Okay, if they magically conjure up Dogmeat for you then YES, THAT IS BAD. My god, I hope there's some way to avoid that. Even if they had made me understand that "you need Dogmeat for this task" and made me schlepp all the way back to Red Rocket and get him, that would still have been a better solution. Although I'm curious as to why he is required... but please don't spoil it. My current character is absolutely not on board with having Dogmeat around (although I'll probably be using him with my next character), if they make having him a requirement in order to finish the main quest then so help me God I will make a mod that lets you do it without him.

You have to use dogmeat to track somebody as part of the main quest, and yes if you don't have dogmeat with you he will magically appear in Diamond City

Actually a sensible reason for why you need him, but still a horrible idea to have him appear like that. Having the game constantly hold your hand like a creepy uncle is tolerable to some extent, but I draw the line when he sticks his finger up your ass. I can't really do anything with scripts right now (I can look at their variable names and that's about it), so I'll have to wait until the GECK is out before I can do something about it.

 

[Hassknecht]

And the moment you try even to steer away, evn just a little from it, it starts to fall apart. The game expects from you to peform certain actions, for example, a point where the game simply expects from you to have dog meat around and if you don't, he magically appears, or where certain options become only available if you have a certain NPC/Companion around - see Kellogs home and the investigation. Fallout 1 and 2 have been a lot more open in your choices, and the dialog of the game and NPC reaction reflected that.

Okay, if they magically conjure up Dogmeat for you then YES, THAT IS BAD. My god, I hope there's some way to avoid that. Even if they had made me understand that "you need Dogmeat for this task" and made me schlepp all the way back to Red Rocket and get him, that would still have been a better solution. Although I'm curious as to why he is required... but please don't spoil it. My current character is absolutely not on board with having Dogmeat around (although I'll probably be using him with my next character), if they make having him a requirement in order to finish the main quest then so help me God I will make a mod that lets you do it without him.

You have to use dogmeat to track somebody as part of the main quest, and yes if you don't have dogmeat with you he will magically appear in Diamond City

Actually a sensible reason for why you need him, but still a horrible idea to have him appear like that. Having the game constantly hold your hand like a creepy uncle is tolerable to some extent, but I draw the line when he sticks his finger up your ass. I can't really do anything with scripts right now (I can look at their variable names and that's about it), so I'll have to wait until the GECK is out before I can do something about it.

It's also fun that Nicky calls him Dogmeat even if you never learned about that name before.

 

[Magnus]

And the moment you try even to steer away, evn just a little from it, it starts to fall apart. The game expects from you to peform certain actions, for example, a point where the game simply expects from you to have dog meat around and if you don't, he magically appears, or where certain options become only available if you have a certain NPC/Companion around - see Kellogs home and the investigation. Fallout 1 and 2 have been a lot more open in your choices, and the dialog of the game and NPC reaction reflected that.

Okay, if they magically conjure up Dogmeat for you then YES, THAT IS BAD. My god, I hope there's some way to avoid that. Even if they had made me understand that "you need Dogmeat for this task" and made me schlepp all the way back to Red Rocket and get him, that would still have been a better solution. Although I'm curious as to why he is required... but please don't spoil it. My current character is absolutely not on board with having Dogmeat around (although I'll probably be using him with my next character), if they make having him a requirement in order to finish the main quest then so help me God I will make a mod that lets you do it without him.

You have to use dogmeat to track somebody as part of the main quest, and yes if you don't have dogmeat with you he will magically appear in Diamond City

Actually a sensible reason for why you need him, but still a horrible idea to have him appear like that. Having the game constantly hold your hand like a creepy uncle is tolerable to some extent, but I draw the line when he sticks his finger up your ass. I can't really do anything with scripts right now (I can look at their variable names and that's about it), so I'll have to wait until the GECK is out before I can do something about it.

It's also fun that Nicky calls him Dogmeat even if you never learned about that name before.

Christ. I might even remove that entire quest.

 

[SidFwuff]

I always wonder why these people play RPG in the first place.

Have you ever played the original Deus Ex? I think it came off much more of a RPG than a lot of other so called 'FPS/RPG' or 'RPG Shooters'.

Encumbrance isn't really a huge thing to fans of that genre- and to be frank, I think Fallout 4 is closer to Deus Ex than a lot of the other hybrids.

It's a hell of a lot better than Deus Ex 2 anyway.

I know that I am bit unfair right now, as most games even F1 and F2 have a relatively tight narrative when it comes to the Mc Guffin. And I guess your child as reason is as as good as everyhing else. The difference though, is that both F1 and F2 allowed you to play the game with a lot of nuances writen either in to the main quest or the side quests. Something that Fallout 4 doesn't really offer to you as the player, simply because of how limited and extremly narrow the dialog is in the game. Most of the options you have are either Kill enemy XYZ for us, or Don't do the quest now. Sometimes with a skill check to get more caps out of it.

Spot on. I agree completely.

Despite this, though, Fallout 4, is starting to grow on me. It's no New Vegas (let alone Van Buren), but I don't dislike it.

I think it's because I think of Black Isle and Obsidian as one "GM" and Bethesda is another "GM". Two different campaigns- campaigns out East tend to be very dynamic, with the GM often letting you do what you want and be silly. Campaigns out West are more 'serious' in that the GM is less experienced and so wants to follow what's in the book more closely. "No, you can't run your own electoral campaign and become mayor. The book says you guys are supposed to either kill the corrupt mayor or expose his crimes to let John C. become Mayor"

Black Isle's three Fallouts (Van Buren, not Tactics), Obsidian's New Vegas, and Bethesda's Fallouts are all the same in that they're attempts at bringing a pencil and paper RPG onto the computer.

Just about every PnP Campaign requires a main quest- an objective. Something that gives us a reason for the game- be it to free the land of an evil wizard, save your werewolf sept, or to become the most profitable Runners around etc.

They all had to fill in our character's backstory too. Raised in a vault, a prisoner (in)correctly convicted of a crime, trying to get your child back etc. The backstory of Fallout 4 isn't all that restrictive- you're married, and have had a child. You were in the army. That's about it, really. I haven't seen anything in Fallout 4 that says you couldn't have been dishonorably discharged, court martialed, a war hero or an officer, hell, I'm pretty sure grabbing the "Medic" perk early on could justify just being a cook in the army etc.

In fact, you can probably play Fallout 4 as if you're a psychopath who only pretended to love your spouse.

The real difference between Black Isle/Obsidian and Bethesda is how they run their campaigns.

We know from the Van Buren leaked documents how Interplay approached the games. They couldn't account for everything players would want to do or try (like in an actual PnP session), so they broke it down into archetypes. Though they did also try to let you ask anything in Fallout 1 to the talking heads.

They essentially created a game for 3 or 4 archetypes:

- The warrior player can solve Quest 3 by doing X. Quest 4 can be be solved by doing Y.
- The charismatic player can solve Quest 3 by doing B. Quest 4 can be solved by doing C.
- The intellectual player can solve Quest 3 by doing X or B. Quest 4 can be solved by doing D.

They also provided ways for each archetype to earn XP. Shady Sands for example:

- The warrior can kill radscorpions
- The charismatic can talk the raiders into giving back Tandi
- The intellectual can help with the crop rotations

Bethesda on the other hand doesn't seem to follow this approach. It's more like they just took the warrior archetype and came up with Quests and then solutions. Then they went back and looked for opportunities where intellectuals and charismatics can influence how things play out.

And the moment you try even to steer away, evn just a little from it, it starts to fall apart. The game expects from you to peform certain actions, for example, a point where the game simply expects from you to have dog meat around and if you don't, he magically appears, or where certain options become only available if you have a certain NPC/Companion around - see Kellogs home and the investigation. Fallout 1 and 2 have been a lot more open in your choices, and the dialog of the game and NPC reaction reflected that.

You're clearly meant to play a caring, honourable war veteran that is well experienced at combat. It also suffers from a lot from what other modern games do too- the sheer body count you're expected to rack up throughout the game. Combat (with guns) is a core feature, so they throw hundreds of enemies at you. New Vegas seemed a lot better at this, but that's probably because there were so many more quests that existed that didn't require (or expect) the use of guns.

Despite myself though, I think Fallout 4 is a lot better than Fallout 3.

Except the damned dialog wheel. Christ, I hate how every dialog option is essentially "Nice/Mean/Unsure(Sarcastic)/Question?".

 

[shengar]

Have you ever played the original Deus Ex? I think it came off much more of a RPG than a lot of other so called 'FPS/RPG' or 'RPG Shooters'.

I haven't played Deus Ex yet (yes skewer me for my negligence) but my point is not about encumbrance itself. It's on how these people formulate an argument against encumbrance. As you can read it from the article, the reason why the author against encumbrance is because it's getting in the way of his lootfest. It forces him to managed his inventory and be efficient with it but for him it is just an annoyance. So instead of making a solid base of argument on how encumbrance should be removed because it adds nothing to role-playing experience, he just shrugged it off as a mere annoyance. It is the crux of his argument against encumbrance that really baffled me to no end.

Plus, an argument for encumbrance in Fallout, this is a role-playing game with a setting of post-post nuclear apocalyptic wasteland. Civilization might started rebuilt itself, but you still can't walk into a bar to buy some food. There is a sense of daily survival within the game. Encumbrance is there to makes player think more thoroughly with their inventory of choice before setting off into an uncharted wasteland.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Hobo simulator.

I'd play that game.

Also if you all value your sanity, serenity, and overall well-being stay far away from these kinds of posts asking for dumb things.

You wouldn't believe what I found perusing Bethesda forums. Fallout 4 is Game of the Decade over there.

 

[Atomic Postman]

And the moment you try even to steer away, evn just a little from it, it starts to fall apart. The game expects from you to peform certain actions, for example, a point where the game simply expects from you to have dog meat around and if you don't, he magically appears, or where certain options become only available if you have a certain NPC/Companion around - see Kellogs home and the investigation. Fallout 1 and 2 have been a lot more open in your choices, and the dialog of the game and NPC reaction reflected that.

Okay, if they magically conjure up Dogmeat for you then YES, THAT IS BAD. My god, I hope there's some way to avoid that. Even if they had made me understand that "you need Dogmeat for this task" and made me schlepp all the way back to Red Rocket and get him, that would still have been a better solution. Although I'm curious as to why he is required... but please don't spoil it. My current character is absolutely not on board with having Dogmeat around (although I'll probably be using him with my next character), if they make having him a requirement in order to finish the main quest then so help me God I will make a mod that lets you do it without him.

You have to use dogmeat to track somebody as part of the main quest, and yes if you don't have dogmeat with you he will magically appear in Diamond City

Actually a sensible reason for why you need him, but still a horrible idea to have him appear like that. Having the game constantly hold your hand like a creepy uncle is tolerable to some extent, but I draw the line when he sticks his finger up your ass. I can't really do anything with scripts right now (I can look at their variable names and that's about it), so I'll have to wait until the GECK is out before I can do something about it.

It's also fun that Nicky calls him Dogmeat even if you never learned about that name before.

Don't you know? Every dog in the Fallout world is named dogmeat.

 

[PossibleCabbage]

Isn't this something that you should get get a mod for if it bothers you? Asking to take away another RPG mechanic from something that's essentially been hemorrhaging them kinda selfish when it's something that isn't going to bother everybody, and you could just get a mod for it.

 

[Magnus]

Isn't this something that you should get get a mod for if it bothers you? Asking to take away another RPG mechanic from something that's essentially been hemorrhaging them kinda selfish when it's something that isn't going to bother everybody, and you could just get a mod for it.

The question is, is this a meaningful gameplay mechanic or an arbitrary ball-and-chain? Can we make a solid argument as to why encumbrance should be in the game? I'm not saying it should be removed, but when thinking about game design one must always ask "does this really add to the experience?". I for one am glad the repair system is gone, it makes the combat (which is entirely what Fallout 4 is about) much more enjoyable. In other, less combat-centric games a repair system has more merit, and I feel that encumbrance is starting to lose its luster now that the game has transitioned from RPG to FPS. If nothing else, it's worth discussing at least.

 

[Walpknut]

At this point they should just remove death and that excuse of a SPECIAL system they have now... People just want their Double Winning simulations nowadays. We are basically turning videogames into what people in the 90's thought all videogames were like.

 

[shengar]

The question is, is this a meaningful gameplay mechanic or an arbitrary ball-and-chain? Can we make a solid argument as to why encumbrance should be in the game? I'm not saying it should be removed, but when thinking about game design one must always ask "does this really add to the experience?". I for one am glad the repair system is gone, it makes the combat (which is entirely what Fallout 4 is about) much more enjoyable. In other, less combat-centric games a repair system has more merit, and I feel that encumbrance is starting to lose its luster now that the game has transitioned from RPG to FPS. If nothing else, it's worth discussing at least.

The thing is, not everyone accustomed to see a gameplay feature from game design perspective. Most of the time it's based on mere annoyance on the gameplay feature and nothing else. How could this happened I think, is because people play with mindset of a lootfest game to a "RPG". At this point, it'll better for Bethesda to make Fallout 5: Borderlands in the future.

 

[sallou]

This actually really irritates me. Its like saying you love burgers, going to Burger King, getting your burger and complaining that you hate beef and buns, and having to eat them with your lettuce and pickles really ruins the enjoyment of eating that burger. Oh and anyway, in this analogy the burger was a small teensy cut of beef and a bucket of lettuce, 10 tomatoes and 50 pickles, all in a gold coated shiny burger carton.

Modern gamers do not know what an RPG is. So many claim to love them when the elements that make it an RPG are the things they hate. And I hate that they've ruined the RPG market for the rest of us. Every fellow gamer I talk to rates Skyrim more than DAOrigins, Fallout 3 over 2 (when they're pretending they've played it) and insists Mass Effect is an RPG.

If you lvoe RPGs but not the stat managment, not the detailed numerical representation of real world phenomena, and the managment and consequence of said numbers; if you hate that there are restrictions based on how you play, what you choose and how skilfully you 'manage'; if you love that you can walk around a whole detailed world, but hate that you cant just carry everything and have all skills available to you-... you don't like RPGs. When I insist I only like burgers with no meat or bread and only lettuce and tomatoes, I dont like burgers, I like salad. And its ok to like salad. Just stop complaining that burgers aren't salad to people who are supposed to be serving burgers.

 

[Rouce]

What did you expect guys. The first and most popular mods I've seen on the Nexus are: Add 1000 of each junk to your workshop, Fusion Cores not draining, remove encumbrance, auto-solve for hacking and lockpicking, unlock all perks in the game, get all bobbleheads and magazines, or simply godmode... Or adding more legendary enemies to the world. Do we really need more of this pointless Borderlands-style legendary enemies to fight and get some enchanted weapons from?

That's it, the main target audience for F4 seems to be the casual gamer. You can also see this at how ridiculous easy the game is even on Survival difficulty.

But to be fair, there are also quite a few more ambitious mods around. Like bringing back the old dialogue menu, craftable ammo or optimizing the difficulty level towards harder.