To your last point, don't get caught up in thinking that this forum represents the majority of Fallout players. I am not sure how many millions of copies the game sold, but judging by the few posters in this thread, and how many of the same names I see in all threads, this forum may make up .0001% of the actual players. The group here just happens to be the most vocal, and of those, the ones decrying what has become of the series scream the loudest.

Yes, but who is going to risk designing them anymore?

The same people who are designing them now. Games like Limbo and Amnesia didn't just do well because they were released in a time that refunds were hard to get. They did well because they were well designed games filling a niche that had been left empty.

The system is hardly perfect but it's a strong arm response to an even more toxic issue. I had many issues with purchasing digital products and them flat out not working on my PC, despite meeting hardware requirements. It's up to the users themselves to decide what qualifies as monetarily fulfilling and experience-rich. If they don't like the way a puzzle or platformer plays, refund. If a game is two hours long and the user feels that's not enough, refund.

Even triple AAA titles like Total War Rome 2, Arkham Knight, and MKX released with stability and performance issues that plagued thousands of users. You can't expect users to go into a purchase with the penchant foreknowledge of thinking they won't have stability/performance issues. Everyone's PC is different and a review isn't going to tell you that.

The same individuals that feel they have a product they can stand by will continue to risk designing it. Kerbal Space Program, DayZ, FNAF, etc.

Totally agree.

And I'm sure the Developers know just how tiny a percentage we are compared to their main target demographics.

They have to balance it between the hardcoe gamers, core gamers. and the casual gamers.

That is why I hope they give us a lot of options to set the difficulty level and several modes to try out.

I'm hoping we at least hash out a few things that they might find useful, but we generate so many message...

On the other hand I wonder how we compare in size to their focus groups, previous Bethesda games gamer stats, and other sources of information they use to determine what to keep and what to change.

I'd think we at least know the Fallout lore better and have more experience playing the other Fallout games..

I just want to keep it civil so we don't turn off any of the Developers that might actually take a look at what we have been saying.

If for no other reason to see just how wrong our speculation is.

There is a reason Bethesda has a history of allowing players to make Master of All characters.... because players want to. It's that simple. Players want to. Bethesda values player freedom above all else with their games. They want people to be able to play the way they want to play. From making a character with low stats who specializes in one method pf game play struggling with every encounter to those of us who want to make a character that we put hours upon hour upon hours into perfecting, mastering everything possible then facing the rigors of the wastes as said character.

Are either of those two play styles wrong? No, not at all, the reason being that it is the preferred method of game play of their players and they got their personal maximum enjoyment out of the game.

And that, my friends.... THAT is the purpose of a game like this. To be able to give as many players as possible the chance to play this game any way they so choose for their personal enjoyment.

Valve is in a position to take complaints and do their own strong-arming with the publishers. A blanket refund policy is a blatant cop-out.

Valve can certainly make a listing of developers on their radar (as it were), and choose to refund Opt-In subscribers when there is an egregious call for action; rather than inflict uncertainty on all developers in the Valve store. .

I'll reiterate: Now developers are effectively presenting their product with a gun to their head; and if they don't start with fireworks and utter servility, they loose.

If any person really wants Bethesda (or any other dev for that matter) to look at what people are saying - make a mod. Seriously, it's the single most effective way of influencing Bethesda. Mods like Duke Patrick's combat overhaul or Real Time Settler are testaments to this.

In truth, the reason why 99% of ideas are never fully realized by Bethesda is because they all sound conceptually great on paper, but in actual execution they fail massively and don't offer an experience that was representative on paper.

It's true.

IIRC, both they and Obsidian have hired for that.

No, they aren't presenting their product with a gun to their head. Again, that's being overly dramatic. Developers are starting to be expected to stand-by their product with utter certainty that the target market will like their product. if your product cannot stand under the scrutiny or possibility of a refund, then that begs the question of how "good" your product actually is.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your solution of "making a listing of developers on the radar," is a contradiction to the "gun to the head" statement you made later. If anything, that kind of book keeping would catalyze the gun to the head situation.

Agreed, but the point remains that getting a MOAT Sole Survivor should be a challenge.

With at least having to complete the main game, and do all the DLC before becoming MOAT.

And it wasn't a challenge in F3 and was barely a challenge in FONV.

Hopefully there will be options in the difficulty settings to adjust the advancement rate.

I know that was an incredibly popular feature in LWE and Project Nevada.

This isn't a thread about refund policies, guys...

So in Fallout 2 you could level as far as 99, but the perks stopped after level 24, right? The game was designed with 24 being the endgame, and it didn't seem to suffer from letting us go beyond that.

With Broken Steel becoming a Master was easier. Prior to that a player had to carefully balance all of the skill AND find all of the skill books and bobble heads which was no easy task, especially considering many of them were in dangerous areas. In New Vegas, the same rule applied, though the Expansion packs made it easier.

Now, should it be difficult in Fallout 4 and take a lot of work? Hell yeah, I'd have it no other way. I want to work my character up with hours of toil in a workshop leveling up my repair and science, engaging in tons of combat to level my weapons, and becoming a silver tongued devil who could charm anyone. All I want is it to be possible. I want Fallout 4 to last as long as possible and taking the time to master everything will give me more time with a game that has a lot of potential and that I have been waiting for since I beat New Vegas. There's nothing I love more than crafting the perfect character for my play style. Plotting out gear, skills, point distribution, all of it.

Becoming a MOAT should be something players work to beyond a game's endgame, for reasons that nu_clear_day highlighted above. Fo3 and FNV suffered from the issue of players hitting cap well before completing a game's main story.

But does becoming a MOAT really hurt gameplay as much as people tend to think? When I play a stealth-playthrough, I tend to prioritize stealth abilities and stick to playing as a stealthy character in that stealth playthrough. I mean I can switch on the fly at any point in time to a different playstyle, but I don't :S.

Not to mention, 99% of the game will be spent with a developing character anyway. We'll still have to choose what skills to prioritize in our progression for the early, mid, and ideally late-game, while mastering everything would be a post-game goal. If I could become a master, it wouldn't mean I could go back and do those quests again as a master. By then it might be that all there is left for me to do is radiant questing and settlement building.

To use my experience as an exemple, playing on Very Easy, I had to clear the MQ+Broken Steel, the majority of other quest chains and all 4 expansion DLCs before hitting lvl 30 and getting access to Almost Perfect, and then go around to collect the SPECIAL bobbleheads, before my character was truly perfect. Of course I was still OP as hell before that cause mint condition gear and high level on the easiest mode is going to do that.

So if lvl progression was at that rate across the board instead of getting more xp on hard maybe that would "fix it" I guess ?

That's true; but the root of that was that MOATS are likely to happen in every game now, for fear of refund-reprisals.

Players should not be allowed access to those parts of the game not intended for their character. MOATs (I'm beginning to hate this word), MOATs are the definition of able to do it all.

An example from Fallout 2: The PC may get the chance to acquire a cyborg NPC. Those PCs that are combat experts generally don't have the science skills to result in the best cyborg (combat NPC), while those PCs with the education for it (not the best combatants), can manage to produce the far better fighter NPC.\

This is a forked path (multi-forked actually; there are more than two options). The player should never have a character that is both the best possible fighter, and skilled in the sciences enough to get the best possible fighter version of the NPC. PC extremes should be mutually exclusive; each coming at the cost of another.

The series was designed with paths through it (like any decent RPG). Fallout 1 & 2 flat-out do not allow the PC to improve their SPECIAL stats on level up. This was mistake #1 for Bethesda, with FO3.
The series had stat improvements, but they were rare, and separated from the PC's development stages; and required money or risks.

Yes, I agree, mostly just a generalization.

I would like the set up to be if you max out one skill you can still be rather decent in a few others. Or possibly max out 2 and have some left over.

I just dont want it to be maxed out in 3/4 of the skills.

Skyrim, at least, made it a very deliberate decision on the part of the player to over-level/etc.... you have to specifically reset skills via the Legendary mechanic, which means it's not really possible to fall into by accident. Unlike, as mentioned, Fallout 3 w/Broken Steel level cap increase, which ends up giving you lots of skill points and extra perks. Kind of hard to avoid that, for players who aren't looking to dig a MOAT.

The TES games, in general, are better about this, since skills only level if you use them. So for a player making a "normal" character, there's little chance of over-leveling and/or MOATing, since you have to deliberately use the other skills to do it. Unlike games that level via XP, and automatically give you stuff every level.

We can't have choice and consequence, as that would undermine the bollock brained simplicity of the pop games that gamesas is churning out at the moment.

See actually, if they used the Skyrim system I'd be cool with that, would fix basically everything too

Yeah, I'm hoping perks are restricted just by SPECIAL instead of level, so that they can let us bank perks for later without running into an issue of, "I saved all of my perk points for the badass level 20 perks", which is why level-ups were always so enforced in the last two games. I'd love more control over when and how we level, and maybe even give us different ways to bend the leveling curve, like with traits or a difficulty setting. It would be awesome if we could decide to just stop leveling at some point.

:T

No, it doesn't. At the end of the day you can only use one weapon at a time or wear one suit of armor at a time. That there is something else you could be wearing hardly matters from moment to moment.

Part of the issue is that it is a single player, single character game and there is only one 'trade' to begin with ... wasteland adventurer. Most of the skills wouldn't constitute a 'trade' to be a master of, but simply represent staples that everyone who wanders the wasteland would have to become familiar with to avoid an early death.

The only two skills I can think of off the top of my head that represent whole trades are 'medicine' and 'science', which cover a whole lot of ground in theory but only add up to a few skill checks during the course of a game. Maybe repair could be added to that list, though science is just as likely to be used for any mechanics based checks.

As to character diversity from game to game, capability-wise they aren't likely to be very diverse anyway. Okay, so that one uses energy weapons instead of guns ... big deal. They both aim and shoot at make critters dead. This one wears chinese stealth armor where as that one used combat armor and stealth boys. I'm floored with the diversity.

Oh, but this one is good at bartering! That means instead of having a million caps in his pockets, he has a million and a half! Just think of all the extra um ... mole rat meat he can buy.

The only 'balance' in a single player game is the character vs the environment. If encounters are too easy, it's probably not because the player character has too many different weapon skills so much as it is because the weapon skill and weapon he's using at the moment is too effective.

While I'm all for choices and consequences, I'd rather them be handled story-side. Helping A makes friends with A and opens up opportunity A1, but makes you an enemy of B and closes opportunity B1, for example.

To answer the part I highlighted, Todd Howard said in one of his interviews something about "rubber banding", or areas where you would get your butt kicked and would have to come back to later. I am betting that there are 30 bobble heads in the game (there are 30 spots on the bobble head stand) and a majority of those 30 bobbles are in areas a low level character might not be able to do because of high level enemies. This would seem to address the issue you have with making it easy to be a MOAT.

I personally will seek out those bobbles, and will do so without help of an internet guide. If OTH, I have done 90% of the game world and still can't find them after a few years of playing, you can bet I will use the 'net to find those pieces- because completionist.

My guess is that those areas will be entirely ignorable by the player; but someplace to go if they want to.

IRRC, in FO3 they set certain areas at a minimum level upon first visit buy the PC; such that later returns to the area kept the lower level setting.

**However the quote you post, meant dialog conversations and/or finding the locations at all... regardless of threat levels within.