Are you done somewhen? I already pointed out that my char is lvl 116 with 344 hours playtime and has done everthing. Such a rushing on me.

You are right, covenant was also a bit longer (maybe 20 minutes), Ship on the House was done in 15 minutes as i had the first location and the second one was 20 metres away from the ship, the rest had to be done on the ship itself.

The "metro" thing in Goodneighbor (nothing to spoiler here) took also longer, right, but beside shooting it was not really demanding and partially buggy as hell (companions stuck etc.)

The described quest in NV took me about 35 minutes last week when i replayed NV. And yes, the ghoul quest is a lot longer. I just fetched another example because the ghoul quest is simply the always appearing example beside a lot more to do in New Vegas

Oh, so it's about the length of the quests now? I think you can finish every quest in NV and 4 within 10 minutes, by fast traveling. But you can also spend hours with them, when taking your time. There isn't really a difference in length... it really depends on how you approach the quests and which way you choose.

That was also my main point, when comparing those quests to each other?! They all have twists and decisions, where you can finish them differently and even turn against your 'quest-giver'.

The lenght and intense of the quest. To have to do and choose multiple things and not just simple 2 step stuff.

I am not the angry video game nerd here, i really don′t want to take a position/role like that, but my main problem is that Fallout 4 after all these changes and cutoffs/simplyfications on the rpg system, the quests and the dialogues simply does not feel demanding in any way for me anymore. I turned on survival and ran through the whole game like butter (not fast travelling the first 100 hours for to get exploration), but the skill distribution just left a flat soulless feeling for me, all these dialogues turned into nonsense when i realized that i only can say 3 versions of yes and one version of no that only ends the conversation and i had to re-enter it for to say yes somehow to progress. And all these quests that sound really nice sometimes but then i realized that my target was 50 metres away and i only had to shoot something to get what i want - no need for lockpick or hacking.......then i already started to loose all hope in Bethesdas design decisions.

I don't like the system that well, and in Oblivion and to a lesser extent Skyrim you could definitely level wrong and end up regretting it.

In Fallout 4, their scaling is pretty forgiving and has more emphasis on location.

All you really need in Fallout 4, is to pick at least one +damage perk. Rifleman is probably the best, but anything will do. Assuming you do that, I've found leveling up favors the player. Especially because you get better Power Armor and Legendary Weapons, as well as a nice HP padding.

As enemies scale, they get some benefits but their damage doesn't scale as much, and their durability is less of an issue because they will never heal as efficiently as the player can. You automatically win any outlast game with your stock of 100+ stimpacks that you're likely to have by high levels.

I want the game you're playing, because it sure isn't Fallout 4 if you're not getting stronger as you level up.

One of the biggest problems I have with the game is being too OP, which is a balance game because the leveling system is broken (for that, I agree with you).

However, once the game is played, knowing the balance and planning accordingly is easy to do. One of the best things about Skyrim and Fallout 4 is that we're no longer required to take perks (and Skryim goes one further by allowing you to lock your level at 1, if you want).

I don't buy into the "need to plan character creation" defense you're stating is an issue. Fallout 4 does not require you to pick perks nor does it force you to build a character in a specific way as to "play it".

Thus, any bobblehead chasing you're doing is your fault, not the game's fault, and the criticizing of the element is borderline "Must have everything handed to me level 1 or this game svckorz!" entitlement, which I can't stand. I'm not stating you have it, but it's damn close.

You should be able to set your SPECIAL, walk out of Vault 111, and play the game from beginning to end without a single perk selection and the base weapons the game provides at level. It won't be easy, but it can be done.

Can't see this as ruining the RPG. Makes it 100x better because I'll say this until it sinks in: stop letting nostalgia make you forget how godawful older RPGs were. The idiotic random fight, the grinding, and worst of all, the micromanagement of skills, classes, and attributes that took away from the game than added to it.

If I wanted to micromanage, I'd balance my freaking checkbook. Wait a second. I don't have a checkbook because something called "internet banking" made my life easier like Bethesda made RPGs easier.

*snap

I definitely did embellish on the details to make a point, and obviously it got a lot of responses from it. The basic fact is still true, though. This post is exactly what I was getting at and was going to reply with.

FO4 definitely smoothed out the system, and it's a lot better than the others. But it still ends up with a really odd difficulty curve. In a game where conserving ammo is generally important, mysteriously going from 1 shot to 2 shot kills is a bit annoying. It's easy to counter as Fly mentioned, but it kind of sets you into choosing extra damage or extra ammo found to feel like you're just as powerful. The zones helped, so that eventually you'll overpower certain areas.


But that still culminates in not necessarily wanting to level. There are ways to fix it within the creature leveling system, but I think it's really difficult to get from that base to a point where you really want to gain levels. I'd rather have enemies level over time (either played time for an action game, or in-game weeks for strategy/RPGs). It's easier to make more immersive as the 'enemy' takes over and gets more powerful, and easier to control for the player. Or you could do it Gauntlet style, where the closer you get to generators the more powerful enemies get, but you can also remove those generators. In Bethesda's usual system, without being able to stop your XP gain, you're fighting against... your own skill and ability? It gives the player the least control over their level of power, and makes it hard to balance the creatures. You end up with odd situations exactly like the ones Fly mentioned.


I've been playing Grim Dawn, an ARPG, with the same zoned creature leveling as most Bethesda games, and that's what got me to make this post. I start the game up again, go back through the same areas, and even though I've gone beyond the level cap of some of them, it still has the overall effect of feeling weaker each time I go through. I can get the appropriately leveled gear or choose the right skills (sound familiar), but all that would do is have the net effect of being just as powerful as I was 10 levels ago.

Arqane:

Then why is it that everybody keeps saying that after about level 50 or so, the character is "godlike"? If the character keeps getting weaker and weaker, how can anybody possibly get to level 75 or more? I don't push to increase level, or avoid xp to increase level, I just play the game, right? So why am I NOT getting weaker as I progress in level as far as I can tell?

Skyrim keeps being brought in, and I don't get that either. After I'd played Skyrim for a thousand hours or so, I increased my difficulty a notch, and then I added mods that increased difficulty greatly. If the leveling system made me weaker, why on earth would I do that? I can already see I'm going to want a Fallout 4 version of "Deadly Dragons" before very long.

By the way, while this is a Fallout issue of course, I would like to say that the Deadly Dragon model of enemy scaling is really very desirable. indivisual sliders allowing the player to set the damage and health stats of each genre of enemy. Imagine, if you think supermutants or assaultrons are too easy, just reset the slider... increase their damage by up to 1000 times normal.That'd make you think, eh? So, if I had one criticism and were to offer one solution for FO4, it'd be for the slider system used by Deadly Dragons to implemented as a matter of course, because just making bullet sponges of everything with a blanket difficulty setting is not very interesting.

Love that quest.

NEW VEGAS SPOILERS follow (I'm serious LOOK AWAY NOW!!):

How you completed it determine one of several outcomes, and even those had slight variations, and forces you into speech and barter checks, sneak or no sneak which could change the whole dynamic of the quest, schmoozing an old lady and make her feel young again (Lady Killer), random exploration or purchases that might yield the required components or being forced to leg it, kill Jason and his ghouls or help them, kill Harland or not, find his girlfriend or not, deal with Davison as you see fit, sabotage the rockets or not by convincing a brilliant but psychological flawed genius that he's in fact a human and not a ghoul--or using the same information to convince him to help and that murder is not the way, then softening the mental blow by relocating him...I mean the domino effect is fairly deep on this one and it brings a lot of skills into play...and all of it to get one little piece of information from Manny Vargas. Always look forward to this quest on a new start up.

Miss the deeper Speech checks...although a couple of my favorite were pleasant surprises like the Strength check with the "I'm sorry, but all these muscles make it hard to hear sometimes," or the Guns check with the Gunrunners to get that SOB Alexander to even trade with you.

Liked how the DLCs emphasized specific skills and capabilities. Dead Money was a little easier for a melee artist, Energy weapons focused player, or reloader with Junk Rounds. Old World Blues can never be fully enjoyed unless your PC is on the bright side or at least (in my case) significantly augmented.

Also, the game was reactive in things like if you were a low IN player, there was no doubt about it. Everyone treated you like a child and conversations were significantly affected. Have a talk with Arcade playing as a dolt sometime for the full affect. He actually feels sorry for you.

Hey, Fallout 4 is a good game. Beautiful world, beautiful atmosphere, great addition with settlements. It just wasn't as good as I'd hoped.

yeah metacritic user ratings are totally untrustworthy, within a day or two of the game coming out a lot of fans of the older style rpgs were slamming fallout 4 and giving it a rating of like 0 or 1 or maybe 3, they didn't even play the game, no possible way, it was probably a smaller number of people massivly spamming the site, raids like that happen on twitch a lot, there's no way to keep someone form making lots of accounts just to spam some low rating, fallout 4 is rated across the board very close to a 9 and deservingly so, there's people who are very vocal and super critical of bethesda owning the fallout franchise and this is no secret, its very in your face, lots of people on that metacritic site saying stuff like "obsidian should of made fallout 4" or "its not a real rpg", or "the graphics are bad" "the writing is horrible", its all the same rhetoric the people who don't like bethesda owning the fallout franchise say, there is always going to be the group of people who are all B#TT hurt over bethesda owning the franchise and they will never stop crying about it and will slam any fallout game bethesda ever makes, fallout 4 is being played a lot, you can easily see that by watching twitch, steam, youtube etc, fallout 4 is gonna end up outselling most current games short of games like GTA, check twitch and see how many people are playing and watching NV, like 2 or 3, then check fallout 4 and its usually closer to thousands, p.s. i just checked twitch, fallout 4 has like 12,000 people on their channel total and NV has like 9, even the witcher 3 only has 1000 people and it was supposedly the goty.

you sound confused

I found the low Intelligence dialogue to be inconsistent unlike Fallout 1 and 2. One second your character is acting like an idiot and the next sentence is the same as a character with average intelligence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4teUZWP3_o and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ocxk1UfxQ are good examples of low intelligence dialogue.

I see many problem with Fallout 4 and it's not really the fault of the game itself. Is more about different generation of gamers, misleading and abuse of words.

The firsts Fallout was harder game where you need to play a lot for earn you power, you need to think about what you, face the consequences of your act, you impact the world where you play ....

Since fallout 3 this side of the Fallout game is less and less present and fallout sell more and more. Dear god in this forum you even have a post of someone complain because he could kill a seller in Diamond city, if that not show how gamers evolve ! I saw some young people try Fallout 1 and they all complain that too hard, too much to read, that action is too slow because you have to think before ....

And something i hardly understand is what mean Open World for people now ? because this fallout is hardly an open world. You can not do what ever you want, the game push you in some path you can not refuse, like the minutman you can not kill them the only way to get ride of them is to ignore the quest, no choice of peaceful ending, dialogue where you can only say yes for progress ( i know you have different way to say yes but none influence the reaction of the npc), you can go in diamond city kill everyone comeback some hours later and no one will attack you and everyone act with you like you did nothing. You have no impact anymore on the world you can be ally with anyone you want the consequence are only visual but the world around act exactly the same with you as you did nothing.

For me and it was like that before Open world mean you can do what ever you want period, where your actions have impact and consequence around you. Take game like X2 or all the X3 (didn't really play x1 so I don't talk about it), mount and blade .... they are open world because the game push you nowhere, you do whatever you want.

At the end fallout 4 is not a bad game, is nice but is hardly a good fallout, and make everything more simple for the game it will lose what make fallout game unique for turn it in a mindless theme park like call of duty.

So see you in some years for the release of Call of Fallout.

Incorrect. In FO 1 and 2 and FOT you can save skill points, you do not need to invest them. In FOT you can save perks. In FO 1 and 2 you don't have to pick a perk, but you do want to use it before you level up to gain another perk or you will lose it(so you want to use it before gaining 3 more levels).

I wouldn't say INT was over powered in the previous games, well it was more so in 3 and NV seeing how skill levels were capped, but not as much in 1 and 2. Now, Charisma IS over powered, and it is even a huge advantage to play a low Int 1 high luck high charisma character with idiot savant. There is no reason to have to mod weapons, so you just need enough perception or agility if using guns to get the appropriate perks for damage. It isn't just INT dialogue choices removed though, it is everything dialogue removed except Charisma. I don't consider that minor, I consider that a major part of character development. If I rolled up a STR 10 toon with 1 or 2 Charisma, I could never intimidate anyone, unless I save scum, and that isn't realistic(let alone any other way to intimidate people). Then of course there is the settlement system, which is also tied directly into Charisma(local leader perk, settlement size).

It great they made a use for Charisma compared to older attempts that didn't quite hit the mark, but in the process they stripped away everything else. So, it fits the mold of 2 steps forward, 3 steps back. The system would have been a lot better keeping all the options from previous games AND including the revamped Charisma. This, is poor design, as I have never found removing stuff as good design, and they removed more than we gained, in regards to Charisma, dialogue, choices, builds.

i hate MMORPG's and all the grinding involved in those kind of games, hence why i hate the minute man but to be honest i like leveling up and finding new enemy types i never encountered before

honestly, most people playing fallout 4 couldn't care less about the old style rpgs, i realize the nostalgic aspect but , fallout has 12,000 people watching and playing the game every night on twitch, compared to TW3[game of the year] and it only has 1000 people, compare that to fallout 1,2 and NV and those 3 games combined have like 10 people on those chanells [combined], the old style fallout game isn't what people want, video games have evolved, people don't want old style rpgs anymore. i prefer the new style of game, i'm sure there's some small market developers you can still find some older style rpg but don't expect some big company to make an old style game nobody wants.

Here's the problem: Stealth perks are just stat boosts which is a copout to actually using real skill. Lockpicking/Hacking are now hiding behind perk ranks which now tells me I can't even attempt to try if I wanted to all thanks to it not mattering since they're the same lame mini-games. Intimidation and other Speech-related feats have been extremely butchered thanks to the new dialogue system; it doesn't matter what you choose at the end of a conversation. Anyone can stealth, use guns, melee weapons, pick a lock, pickpocket someone, hack a terminal, use power armor and craft in a settlement all without choosing a single perk. There are many other adventure games out there that have their own thing, but I don't consider them an RPG just because they offer different gameplay elements. There's no need to be technical. RPG's have grown into a specific genre for over 2 decades now. Fallout 4 seemed to have stripped all the best elements. It's only an FPS set in an open world. I don't consider Dead Island an RPG. Fallout 4 is essentially that on heroin.

Now if only MMORPGs had us able to complete the missions in different ways more often. The most that I have found is use this innate skill to unlock a path to a shortcut or secret area or talk your way out of a fight. Although, most MMOs don't even seem to even bother with this. Just go here and click this object, then go here to kill this person or worse yet kill 100 rats to give 5 rat tails to a quest contact.

I played Aftermath, a post apocalyptic RPG way back when, a couple of years after D+D hit the market, in the days of pen and paper gaming. The levelling and perk system in FO4 is considerably more streamlined and workable than pure Aftermath system, yet it was a superbly crated RPG.

Trouble is, there's many in the industry who hang labels on games simply to justify their own opinions.

Mostly you make my point, just 1 or 2 things to comment :

- I don't blame bethesda for release this kind of product, they will be stupid to not do it. They make game simpler and sell more. what make me really shock is the number of people who applaud that and ask for mindless product and beg for dlc and pay more for it. It's clear the game where you have to think and take time, where you need to actualy use your brain is dead. And the fact you call that nostalgic aspect is even more scarier.

- On twich only new release make a lot of view, give some months and you will have a lot less people watching fallout 4 is a really poor way to compare games.

It's not the levels that make you more powerful, it's the equipment and perks. As I mentioned, it's very much all or nothing. Yes, it's fairly easy to stay ahead of the curve and one-shot things practically the entire game. But you could have a different leveling system, and still have the same perks and equipment. As it stands, if you level up and go back to the same area, creatures will continue to have more HP and more armor until they hit the cap for the area. If you didn't have that odd system where leveling inherently makes you weaker, with the perks and equipment making you stronger, it would probably be easier to balance, and avoid the bullet sponge tactic that neither of us likes.

You don't have any facts backing up your claim. You use Twitch as your "proof". LMAO. People watch twitch broadcasters, not just certain games. If a person likes Mr Snarf, it doesn't matter if he playing Little Timmy's Stupid Adventure, they will watch. You are also comparing a newer game to an older game, and in some cases comparing it to games 20 years old with the older Fallouts. Doesn't mean jack. I've seen 10K + people watching a particular streamer playing Pillars of Eternity, so by your logic I guess that means people want more RPGs like Pillars of Eternity eh? Just because YOU don't want actual RPGs doesn't mean there isn't a market for it. There is a reason people complain about lack of RPG in Fallout 4, Skyrim, etc. If they didn't care about it, or want it, they wouldn't complain or criticize about it. They would just praise it for how awesome it was. Which if you look up and down, review after review, those games do get criticized for lack and then more lack of RPG and more emphasis towards action.

Not only that but any important, and many non important locked terminals, safes, chests, doors, etc all have keys or passwords you can find. You don't even need to pick locks or hack computers, if there is anything important inside you can guarantee there is a key or password. It is like taking the perks to do this is just only there as another way you can scrounge for exp from time to time. Compare this to other games, and if you didn't have the skills needed to get into a place, it was locked out until you did. Not anymore!

Diablo 3 desaster showed a different point of view (and gives user-metacritic another meaning then you did try to show up). But only time will tell us the truth. 12k watchers is really nothing special for a new game, the next best AAA title will shift that back again for normal.

You're certainly right, I don't like bullet sponges, but here's the thing. I want to be able to use some of those really cool weapons I keep hearing about that I can't get until my level is higher. If I were to get that cool weapon (let's say a gauss rifle) and go back to that place where the the three raiders, three mole rats, and an attack dog were, they would be no challenge whatsoever. So, if I'm going to get that cool rifle, mini-gun, fat man combination with the built-in Swiss Army knife or whatever, the enemies have to toughen up to make it worthwhile, eh?

Explosive minigun is rare, but explosive auto shotgun or explosive 10mm pistol (modded to auto with piercing) drop literaly often and from then on you don′t have any enemies anymore.