How many quests did Skyrim have though? Cuz you had mage guild, thieves guild, assassin guild, companions, then quests for each town/Hold, then Daedric Quests, and then radiant quests for each town and each guild.

The problem I have is that the majority of the Minutemen quests are too much like the radiant quests, and a lot of the different faction quests are also too similar to radiant quests, which is generally "go to location X and kill enemies AND/OR retrieve item".

There are some decent quests, but too many of the quests are repetitious. They needed to add more "neutral" factions in this game, slavers, mercenary groups you could join, being a bounty hunter, etc, like the "guilds" in Skyrim with more unique quests instead of repetition.

I also highly agree that this game is SEVERELY lacking on Fallout Lore. Haven't heard one damned word about the LW, and the BoS basically take credit for everything the LW did in the few things from FO 3 that are mentioned, AAFB and defeat of Enclave.

Let's compare:

FO3

- 11 main quests (2 skipable)
- 17 side quests

FO4

- 35 main quests:

>11 everyone does
>24 in the branching third act (the shortest possible third act you can have is 3 quests, most are much longer)

- Roughly 25 faction quests (NOT counting radiants or the faction branches in the third act)
- 5 companion quests
- Roughly 18 side quests

Radiant and repeatable quests were not counted.

FO4's count may go slightly up or down once the wiki is better completed, but it's pretty clear already that FO4 has more vanilla content.

Well, this got me curious since I haven't really been keeping track of faction or MQ quest lines since I've been building. Was really shocked on what I found. Based on the game manual, you appear to be correct.....

Fallout 4 only has a total of 4 factions:

Number of MQ quests :

!!?! <-- Note: Skyrim: 19 Fallout NV: 100 (with 81 unmarked miscellaneous side quests)

Number of Institute quests (to include side/favor faction quests & radiant quests):

Number of BoS quests (to include side/favor faction quests & radiant quests):

Number of Railroad quests (to include side/favor faction quests & radiant quests):

Number of Minute Men quests (to include side/favor faction quests & radiant quests):

Number of miscellaneous side quests not related to a faction:

The base game for NV had a minimum of 13 factions (which was really 16 factions when you factored in the 4 different raider tribes). And all of these except the raider tribes had several faction/favor related quests.

Also for comparison, Skyrim had a minimum of 13 factions (not including the extra factions that came with DG or DB DLC). Skyrim's faction quests averaged some 16-20 quests per faction. And that doesn't include the miscellaneous sandbox side quests like the Great Tresaure Hunt, Collection mini game, becoming nobility i.e. Thane of all the holds, or building your own home/getting married etc.

So I would propose 2 likely reasons why this may likely be so:

1. Voice acting for not just 1 but 2 protagonists. And completely unnecessary scripting to allow free camera shot close ups for views of the protagonist facial expressions while they're speaking to just about every vendor in the wasteland. That took up a significant amount of development resources and time. Which could've gone into increasing the MQ and number of side quests, content (such as a greater variety of weapon types etc). Or better yet, into QA to review the horrific, and non-intuitive UI and speech interface which was clearly designed for the console platform.

2. The settlement feature. I personally LOVE this feature and it's clear Beth dedicated a lot of development reources/man hours in making this stable and reasonably bug free. I've yet to run into any bugs or glitches in any building scenarios in my settlements. However, those [censored] who don't care for this amazing sandbox aspect, will complain that this detracted from the other questing/weapon content in previous games.

The voice bsa archive file for FO4 is 2.5 GB alone--this doesn't include the sounds bsa files which hold the radio station sound file data. The corresponding voice file size in NV was 1.6GB. So I personally find the Diamond City radio selection VERY limited at some 38 songs (a mere 45.6 MB compared to the 48 mp3's that the vanilla version of Radio NV had at some 269MB total. So the trade off for the new voice acting for traditional features like more radio stations was a let down for me. Particularly since listening to Diamond City becomes really hard on the ear by the 3rd recycle of the playlist. And the station's maniac depressive DJ makes listening to that station even worse.

*note to self, murder the Diamond City DJ at the earliest opportunity*

So yeah, I do agree with you OP. Particularly since the existence of #1 implies loads of more game content and quests could've been added in lieu of the PC voice acting files. Also the radio station selection is a bit lacking. But then again, I've been horribly spoiled by NV mods like CONELRAD, Hepcat radio, Wave Radio etc. But it will be a while yet before I complete the MQ and faction quest lines in the game. And I'm replaying with a different faction alignment as a female PC next time around. The degree of replay (minus the sandbox random settlement feature attacks) appears to be somewhat limited. So I'll likely return to playing Skyrim full time until the modders get their hands on the game next year.

No offense, but this post is kind of plain wrong, and it hurts me to say that because you clearly put a lot of effort into it.

1. FO4 has four JOINABLE factions with questlines and all. AKA, the same amount as Skyrim and New Vegas.

2. The main quest is way longer than 12 quests, that's just the first two acts.

3. This isn't how development works. The quest design would have been handled by a completely different team than the ones that did the voice acting or the settlement feature. Saying that they detracted from the number of quests kind of shows an ignorance of how game design works.

4. By your own count the game has more sidequests than FO3.

Again, not trying to be an ass but I disagree with what you wrote.

^^

I wasn't counting which joinable factions you opt to align with. And if you exclude the factions you join to get you to the endgame, there appears to be only two acts for the MQ.......

on the number of quest for NV (and FO3) source is here: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_quests

point still valid on the voice acting bit. All that developmental budget and effort that went into the PC voice acting might have been put to better use adding more content to the game. Like adding flora/fauna to the underwater portion of the map. Or more treasure/collectible hunts perhaps? in the murky underwater bay area across from the Castle. The lack of critter spawning in the water/underwater areas may be a level based thing however. My PC is still too low level if that's the case.

lol i agree wtih u, ppl tent to think the same team do everything on a game.

There is three acts in the MQ, not two. The first two acts are generally the same but the third act is when your choices start to matter and the sotry begins to branch off.

There are neutral factions but they arent really fleshed out enough. I was disappointed when the Atom Cats only had two missions and then became irrelevant. I also havent been able to join the Children of the Atom or the Pillars of the Community. Would've been fun to join a triggermen gang as well.

These OPs may disagree with you about the way BGS allocated their budget resources toward the voice acting, coding/design teams

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1562090-dialogue-wheel-a-great-way-to-mask-lacking-dialogue/

every minuteman quest is either ghouls, mutants or raiders hassling a settlement. its so boring i dont even bother with it. There is not enough variation in the side quests. I've done 26 minuteman quests helping out villagers who are getting lost or attacked. i enjoy the actual settlement raids but now the settlement in trouble stuff bores me. maybe i should turn up the difficulty but thats not really the issue here. Hopefully the DLC will bring something good like it did with Skyrim, but it has been 4 years since Skyrim, i guess i just expected a little more from a next-gen game.

I agree that it feels very short and also seems to have much fewer side quests that aren't the endless randomly generated "clear out this building" or "a settler has been kidnapped" quests. Though I have a lot of hours of playtime, the vast majority is from randomly generated quests and building settlements.

those 35 main quests… i count 9 mains uptill the point of making the break after mass fusion. I've sided with the brotherhood/minutemen who seem to not mind sharing info. what are these 25 faction quests that aren't repetitive. the BoS work for the occupants of the sherif station are get tech kill something in location x. the work for the railroad is make contact with safe house on PAM's behalf or get something from a dewdrop and go to location x. the settlement ones are always 'someones in trouble go do something nice'. and the institute is go get a rogue synth or 2 from here before anyone realises they are a synth. i have found plenty of individual missions that are a bit different but they are few and far between. i also feel FO3 had more randomness. where are the slavers, where are the crazy dudes worshipping a man fused with a tree or the like. Don't get me wrong, its a big improvement but I've had it for about a week and a half and it already feels like it will be over by the end of the weekend, end of next week at the latest. in my opinion thats short for a bethesda game.

I've played the game for 4 days already and just finished the main quest. I have a whole bunch of interesting side quests to complete, but I will admit my quest log is pretty sparse right now. But if we are talking about the enjoyment I've gotten from the content, there is definitely not a shortage imo.

How long take u to finsih Fo3 or NV??? and i mean w/o rpg or mod or DLC just questing.

I have finish Fo4 on almost the same time i did the other 2 games. And that was 120hs little more or less. That for me is a HUGE game. I can complet Tom Raider in 24hs

This. I have 50+ hours in it and barely dented the main quest, haven't seen the lower half of the map and haven't finished any faction. I just hit level 26 last night. You should've stopped to smell the roses...makes the game so much sweeter.

yes ill agree with all that. o dont bother with the radio though i find it distracting. the voices could have been mastered better in my opinion. they are to quiet unless you are directly talking to someone but then they are too loud.

I love the building element. i only wish i hadn't built so many armour frames in my warehouse in Sanctuary before realising the castle is a much cooler base.

i would however like to be able to have the option of sending all my supply lines to the same base. for some reason i only managed to send 4 to Sanctuary before it stopped letting me but for some reason its fine for me to send 20 to red rocket.

72 hours in and I'm still finding new locations on the map, haven't completed the main quest or many of the side quests yet. Fallout 4 hasn't disappointed in terms of Content yet.

yeah the Atom-Cats were a huge disappointment, especially as theres even 3 custom paint jobs separate from the Atom-Cats one but they dont even acknowledge them when you wear them

I don't understand why they thought this was a good idea. I hate the voiced playable character (especially the male voice) and most people don't like the dialogue system or the face shots during it.....such a bad decision that I hope begins and ends with this game (shutters to think of TES 6 having voiced character).

Skyrims map markers numbered in the 200 region? This has just over 300. The vast majority of skyrims side quests were radiant fetch quests. The faction radiant quests here are essentially the same, they just seem less interesting because it doesn't always have you discovering a brand new location. This does mean there are less quests, and less misc quests, but every quest in this game is more nuanced and all have varying ways to complete them. Most of skyrims side quests didn't give you that freedom. It comes down to, do you need to be given instructions to enjoy yourself?

Sure I'll bite:

Main quests before branch-off at "Instituntionalized":


Faction quests (NOT main story NOR Radiant)

If you're not into exploration and puzzle solving, Bethesda's games arent for you.

It was 100% the same with Skyrim - a vast ocean, little depth. Although Fallout 4 is slightly deeper mainstory wise.

Can we really count New Vegas's quests by sheer number, though, and not content? New Vegas had a full named quest for everything, and a good amount of them were very simple fetch quests, like Aba Daba Honeymoon or Still in the Dark. Other quests like Volare! or They Went That Away are just there to point you to other quests along the way, like Ant Misbehavin' or Come Fly With Me. Or quests like Cold, Cold Heart that are literally just "talk to this person". Or quests like "Don't Tread on the Bear!" that are only there to tell you when you've pissed off a faction.

New Vegas has a lot of content to be sure, but the actual number of quests is really inflated by basic tasks and background quests.

This. Though FO4 does have a few marked quests like this, most of them are misc. objectives instead.

That's not to crap on NV though- it's still one of my favorite games ever.

yeahhhhh NV name everything something that Fo4 dont most of the Fetch quest go to miscellaneous.

It seems you don't understand what the Minutemen are. They exist to protect those in the commonwealth. So of course they send you off to clear out dangers to the farmers/settlers, thats what they do. Other than clearing places out to establish new settlements(like the castle) what exactly did you expect? Minutemen are by far the least interesting faction quest wise.

The Railroad has you clearing out places as well but they also have you travel high to place weather reading machines, protecting synth smugglers, infiltrating/sabotaging the institute, etc. etc.

BOS has you extorting food from farms, collecting blood samples from wasteland creatures, sabotaging the institute/railroad, and even has a quest that deals with revelations and betrayal.

I havent even gotten to the Institute so I cant speak on that yet.

It sounds like you played through the main story too fast and didnt take the time to play each faction out before you moved on. Which is fine, but makes you not really qualified to say how little content there is.