I would not expect your save game to be salvaged, just based on how past Bethesda games have worked. There are exceptions and cases where it was, but most of them, nope.

The way to think of it is that the saved game contains all the information needed to make the world appear the way it does (offering you stuff, corpses, loot, etc).

When you load your saved game, it is saying "hey, load all this stuff in these places." When it is doing that in our saved games it is loading something in a certain way that when you go to that area, it crashes.

See the problem? When bethesda fixes this and makes it impossible to happen, it only effects the world state to NOT ALLOW this combo that crashes to happen / be saved anymore.

that combo is IN our saved games, even if bethesda patches the "world" to not allow this conflicting data.

An overly simplified example is this:

You save. Savegame1

Frogman is chilling out at the beach.

You do a quest for Frogman which kills him.

Frogman is supposed to send out a notice to the world "iamdead=true" except there's a typo and it sends "iamdeaf=true"

You save. Savegame2

Now you go to Dogboy. when you walk near him, he triggers an event looking for Frogman since it thinks "iamdead=false". Can't find him when trying to move him. Crash.

If you load savegame2... crash.

Now people go on the boards and calls the CEO a synth, this angers them and they fix the bug. Hooray!

You excitedly patch the game and you load your savegame2... crash.

Why?

Because all bethesda fixed was frogman sends out the notice "iamdead=true" but when you load your saved game it has "iamdeaf=true" in it still.

it requires either some way to patch your savedgame to change the variable within it OR to change the code on dogboy so he accepts "iamdeaf=true" as well.

If you load savegame1, it will work. This is grossly oversimplified but it is the gist of the issue.

But imagine in my example if savegame1 and savegame2 had 60 hours of gameplay in between... and it wasn't obvious that dogboy is looking for frogman (what if iamdead=true is a variable used by the octopus pirate in his quest, accidentally overwriting frogman's status?)

There are many reasons why Bethesda can't do the equivalent of "iamdeaf=true" ... imagine it isn't a boolean variable but it is looking for something in the world that is destroyed.

IE a savegame has a check via negation in it. AKA, "I'm expecting this object to be valid but it is not valid." You can never patch the saved game to revert this type of conflict.

On top of that, the issue of flat out save corruption. What if instead of storing "iamdead=true" it stores "103249109skdmksm" based on some memory garbage that happened wrong. Everyone's "storage" of that variable is going to be different and there is no single way to repair just that.

You can hope for a savegame editor / edit but chances are something that parses the file wouldn't even be able to read it correctly to make the needed changes.

Hope that clears it up. Be hopeful it will be fixed! But realistically, in the past, that's how it's worked.

thx alot frott.

it is very clear now and everything sounds bad..

at this point the only right choice is put FO4 in a corner and wait for news... ready to restart the game once more.

In any case it is true the motto "don't buy a new game, just wait for Patches"

We also know that RevertWorld heals this issue (but messes up the whole game in the process), so it must be an evidence that this is actually a problem in the world itself. Sadly we are playing a guessing game here so it would be safe to assume that none of us knows the exact cause of this problem (and probably neither does bethesda), however we managed to rule out a few possibilities. Even if we will nick the source of the issue in theory, it would be very unlikely that we will be able to confirm it somehow.

There is one thing that I wanted to ask you guys though. How many of you bothered to build big settlements, I wonder if there is a correlation here.

Yeah, I just tried RevertWorld and I can pass into the area.

Hello guys,

Not having this problem, however i am dat past the problem quests.. None of the places that cause problems to me. I have already attacked the institute with the BOS (i can reccomend it highly). No problems... Still bumping because you guys deserve the full game too. I am running:
Sapphire HD-7870 OC GHz edition
I5-3570K
16gb ddr3 ram
Mass storage hdd

Do Bethesda answer ticket submissions in a hastily manor? Or at all? First Bethesda game for me so I haven't contacted them before.

Thanks man, we really appreciate the support and taking the time to come here even though you don't have the problem
Oh and as somebody said, if you could add a spoiler tag that'd be great. You can click the 'speal BB code' for a spoiler tag. thanks again

If you mean http://help.bethesda.net/app/fallout_feedback, it says you won't get a reply or conformation. We know that they're aware of the bug though and are looking into it.

spoiling much?

Did you build any settlements?

I am going to do another story, but then for the institute.. Ill keep you updated whenever i get the crashes too if i follow the usual "crash path".. I saw on the first 2/3 pages that 2 people with nvidia systems got the crash.. But then again, there are a lot more nvidia players over AMD players. They dont all seem to have this problem...

Used this one, which is "ask a question" so I would hope it comes with an answer http://help.bethesda.net/app/ask

You smart sonofabich, i didnt even know that existed! god dangit
I doubt you'll get a reply though as the issue is known and they'll report back once they can

Tried to not spoil that much , anyway my least priority was and still is building settlements. Havent even completed sanctuary Quest het. I have made one settlement all their needs, wich is East of the problem area

It's strange as it effects only some people who play the game, I don't think its a hardware thing though as we've had reports from PS4 and Xbox One.

Huh, thanks for the info.

What about the rest of you guys?

I kinda think that maybe it has something to do with building/scrapping to much

it has absolutely nothing to do with vedocards, since the very same [censored] happens to console peasants

I've been wandering the Commonwealth for some 120 hrs (on PC) and have somehow dodged that area completely! o.O I have a number of settlements built up (and some even well above "max size"). Still, I've been all around that area but not to or through it. I had too look up Monsignor Plaza on the wiki to figure out where it was (having assumed it was toward the bottom 1/3 of the map and not smack in the middle of everything).

I'm sorry you're all suffering through this one, but I'm glad that you made the post so I can now be mindful of it.

Has anyone made a .bat for the workarounds (so one command could be entered via console to handle the bulk of the temp solutions)?

That likely isn't it... There are a number of players who are using Cheat Engine to freeze the "size" value of settlements so we can build them out MUCH larger. And I have a dozen or so settlements linked; about half of which I would say are built over the limit. The only problems I have experienced are other random quest bugs (but no full breaks). No realproblems (aside the tedium and normal annoyances) with settlements otherwise.

Dayyum, 120 hours is freakin impressive

Most of the console commands are usually 1 line then you continue and complete another object and you enter another line so creating a batch might not be super helpful apart from making less to type. I'll look into it though. Appreciate the support & feedback

And I agree about the Settlements, I've seen people create insane settlements and I don't believe they've crashed. I've created only small ones, nothing compared to what others have.

well it was just a thought.

I guess im done thinking about this, the game is no longer fun and just causes frustration. Never jump on a hype train of a freshly released game kids... just chill the fook out for a couple of weeks and wait for the patches to roll

Yeah.... and I'm only level 32. bahahahaha

That's all I was thinking though - save on typing it out for each particular quest AND making it somewhat easier (possibly even more so for the less savvy).

http://imgur.com /F3Bstag

well yeah revertworld resets all of the settings to the default, which is not relevant to the problem as you could do exactly the same thing you did before after revertworld and end up with the bug again.

if there was something that, for example... only reset all quests (not settlements, reputations, open world kills, exploring, etc) we could see if it is a quest conflict that is causing it. Or if it could somehow anolyze completed quests and set the game state properly.

Or just reset the NPCs only... to see if it is a screwy npc

Or just reset settlements / ownership only...

etc

but yea resetting everything = same as just starting the game again.

for your sake i hope you left the game running, because that's only 8 hours of sleep a night and 100% of the rest of the time you played the game.

I also don't see how you can wander around for that much and not rack up enough EXP to be much higher level O_o

let alone all that and you missed a chunk of the game that has easily a dozen quests passing through it

I'm 51 and I've got ~60 hours played and finished the vast majority of quests, collections, etc. just waiting on the bug fix so i can forward the story for diff factions

There's a post limit 200 posts but gstaff has been here when we were over 200 as well and hasn't locked us yet

It also keeps all quests/items in your pipboy. It does revert your looks and clothing but it can be changed. Enemies also get blown up (pretty funnay dat) but spawn back straight away. Not sure if thats related or not but gotta keep the hope alive haaha

Fair enough dude, just check back each day. I'll update OP when a fix has been found. Thanks for all the work you've put in here! Hopefully you'll be able to play soon