Naaa you made some great points, and I have to agree with you that the days in which a video game maker has True freedom to do what they want are long behind us. I think the freedom comes in making something that is Amazing, and that is very hard to do and keep the older gamers happy too.

Fortunately I think the acid test of this theory is soon to unfold before our eyes... New Vegas. As this game is being made by folks from the same crew as Fallout1/2 combined with the fact that they are using the GECK and same game mechanics as Fallout3, we will all see how much of the original wonder they will be able to capture. I really don't care either way, as to me it will be like a full sequal to the Fallout3 game, and very much look forward to seeing how good those guys really are in the GECK.

That said I think the most enthralling thing for me was not the "cannon" nature of the game or its technical precision to the previous story lines, but rather the ability for Fallout3 to immerse me in that world. Combining real-time action with Havok physics and a million+ object world, and doing all of that in a 1950's apocalyptic theme is what I find exciting and always fun to play. I like GECKing more now, far more, but the game never looses its joy for me.

M

How about more holdouts from the US gov (like a competing Eden Brain or something)?

Adding real locations like the Green Briar Bunker might also be fun:
http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/greenbriar/index.html

This site has all sorts of photos of real fallout shelters and examples of how they were stocked! The supplies are piled in there!
Fallout Shelter photos:
http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/corpseng.html

http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/cdmuseum2/commun/weatherford/index.html

Shelter with piles of survival biscuits falling apart and containers rusting open into standing water:
http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/cdmuseum2/pnbparis.html

I think adding these to underground shelters would be great. You could loot the stuff and try and sell it or provide it to towns/people (some people have requested more interaction with people or building up NPC towns...

Shelter Supplies:
http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/shelsupp.html
http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/cdmuseum2/supply/food.html


WPD

I loved the start of Fallout 3 when you come out of the vault and everything can kill you. When I started getting to a high level it was too easy and it just felt like a shooter, I didn't feel like I had to survive. I think Fallout 4 should try to keep the feeling that you had at the start of F3 for a bit longer into the game.I don't want to feel like a one man army.

Traders should only want to buy good stuff or things they need instead of buy absolutely anything I have. This would makes caps harder to get and make the game a bit harder.

The map should be comparable in size to FO1 or at least Oblivion.

More desicions that have lasting consequences like blowing up Megaton.

Better animation and a world that feel more like a living one than fallout 3.

Maybe somewhere different from America (I know the game is supossed to have a 50's America feel to it but it would be interesting to see what happend to the other countries)

Radio stations with more than 3 songs . F3's music was great but there's only so many times I can listen to 'Set the world on fire'.

Make stuff weigh more

This is my first post on these forums so these have probably all been suggested but this would be my perfect fallout 4.

I think having the choice of being bald would be kind of cool. Not everyone in the wasteland would want hair..? I would think. If Beth can make the PC's facial features detailed enough, and not have such strange head sizes and shapes, then maybe having a bald character wouldn't look so weird. It just doesn't work with the head shapes and sizes already given.

And no I'm not bald incase you were wondering.

The occasions where a raider runs away or cowering down saying "Don't kill me", and I don't kill them but try to talk to them (holstered weapon) hoping for some interesting follow-up, nothing happens. Maybe at least on occasion, something of interest could follow from some dialogue. Information perhaps, even if it needs to be bartered for.

First off, Vehicles. Why not? I'm sure someone could have figured out how to make one of the HUNDREDS of Cars laying about the wastes drive without petrol/diesel. Some sort of Battery powered car even, doesn't have to be a Mclaren, the speed of a damned golf cart would be fine.

Following from that, there should have been some sort of Fatigue system. I mean, I'm running around in the scorching sun in my business suit, killing a bunch of dudes and I never get tired? The lack of fatigue almost makes the housing on the game quite pointless, apart from hording your junk there, as in later levels you don't need to sleep to be "fully healed"; a few stimpacks that are far to easy to come by can sort you out to near enough perfect health.

I agree with many of the earlier comments in regards to a eating/drinking system. Food should have played a much bigger role, I've played through 4 different games and I can honestly say I've never used anything beside Stimpacks to heal. Dehydration would be great, pure water would make a lot more sense as dirty water could be damaging to your players health, or something of the sort. Radiation levels should have effected me more than they do, the whole of DC would be radiated surely if it had been hit by bombs, however, I understand that this would make the game slightly annoying if I was constantly gathering radiation using the system they have currently. But maybe you could wear a gas mask when out in the open wastes, and a radiation suit, and then take them off in towns, houses and other enclosed areas. Though this wouldn't make your character look the most awesome, it would certainly make him/her the most alive.

What about making weapon repairs a hell of a lot more realistic? I mean, I'm using a Hunting Rifle which fires .32 caliber bullets to repair a Repeater which fires .44? I know this may seem like nit-picking, but there are a bunch of random pieces of wood and tin cans laying all over the place, the possibility of just nailing these to the side (which seems plausible due to the appearance of the Hunting Rifle anyway, looks home-made) - and smelting the tin cans? The introduction of the Pitt would have made this an awesome feature to repair guns way more effectively.

Also, I love the idea of towns becoming directly effected by your actions (in a less serious way than the destruction of Megaton). Ruling towns, assigning food gatherers and weapon forgers and the likes would create a well guarded, well fed and productive town, with growing amounts of houses and settlers, and would also directly effect what kind of stuff the shop keepers are selling. Killing a bunch of dudes within a town however, would cause the houses to become derelict, settlers would move out in fear of their lives and the select few that stay would be well armed but underfed, making them easy targets - and again, effecting what kind of stuff they sell, if anything.

Just underlying changes like these would make the games description "every minute is a fight for survival" a lot more realised. I've got my main character to level 28 and I don't feel like I need to survive, I feel like everyone else is trying to survive from me, I should be scavenging for food and such instead of going about my business without a care in the world, knowing anything that comes across me I can easily kill. Don't get me wrong, Fallout 3 is one of the greatest games I've played and I'm a huge RPG fan, but there are just some flaws that need ironed out.

Have the weapons more deteriorated, and broken down. Don't make it so easy to fix a gun of any kind. Maybe have it so when you do find a rifle or pistol identical to your own, it only has certain parts that are in working order as well. Making it so every rifle you find, may or may not have the part of the rifle or pistol your looking for. Sure would make fighting tougher with just a broken rifle. And maybe have the ability to use a empty or broken gun as a club?

I thought there is already a bald haircut ? O_o

The only parts that could break in a gun or easy to find in most gun stores, that do gun repair.

SteamingClown, The US military has tons of mothball vehicles & tech that can easily be fixed up and ready to be used and not break down for a good amount of time. Also, everything as a how to do book. From repairing it to use it for dummies and that is no joke. That said, I would not be surprised if some locals find the military gear, vehicles & weapons and use them to protect themselves & others. Btw, The car you see will not work due to the emp from the nukes destroying all the electrical components. The only vehicles that would work are the ones that where not turned on at the time of the bast and burned out as well.

Well if your 200+ years into the future, and exspecially after a nuclear war, finding parts for deteriorated weapons that actually has complete working parts are not going to be easy to come by. And there are tons of American weapons, that have very tiny little pieces in them, that could go missing or just completely break and be unsalvagable. Take the M16 for example. That weapon is so finely put together and complex, that if one of the smallest parts goes missing, the weapon would almost be completely useless to shoot because it could explode in your hands or jam before you get a shot off. And I don't think every wasteland gun dealer is going to have the exact part for your gun. That's why it would be hard to keep your weapons in check, because weapons are not easy to keep in good condition if they've been out sitting somewhere for 200+ years. Plus it would add to the harsh reality of the wasteland, because for all you know, your weapon could jam or malfunction in someway during or before a fight.

Does a good game have to be "dumbed down" to get more players? (And if so, why is that?)
~Also how is that at all good for the current players that are fine with it as is?

*Put another way... Would you still like watching Jeopardy if next season, they comparably reduced it to the likes of Wheel of Fortune?

In the early 90's SSI released the Legend series of FPP dungeon crawlers (beginning with Eye of the beholder). That game had some tough spots and I felt it was better for it. Secret doors were actually hidden and you had to actually find one in order to enjoy having found a secret area ~few if even one were required to complete the game (if they were, they were easier to find). Later games of the style got better graphics and voiced dialog, and came with auto-maps that pointed out secret doors, and the switches to open them went from concealed stones to contrasting colored dinner plates. :facepalm:

The M16 isn't all that complex and only has a few some parts granted you lose a part to that weapon you are indeed screwed. However it's entirely possible for more than a few wastelanders to be skilled machinists and be able to reproduce weapon parts. I do like your idea about finding a weapon that has broken parts like the barrel being bent, the lower receiver being destroyed etc. but having the firing pin not damaged at all and you being able to take that part and replace the firing pin in your weapon which is damaged. Little things like this would make Fallout 4 more complex, realistic and enjoyable

Well, you have to know where to look and I know about the M16/M4/M249 (squad automatic weapon) types of guns. I work on them. I can tell you that most military bases have a storage area that would still be there 200+ years from now. Full of all kinds of parts. Also, gun nuts have boat loads of parts that they keep just in case they need them in their houses. I do see your point tho. The only thing will be is knowing where to look.

I haven't read anything in this thread, so I don't know if this has been said yet, but i think some type of Fallout -> Midwest would be cool. I mean, the first 2 were in the west, 3 is on the east coast. Vegas will be in the west... nothing in the midwest though. I've lived in the midwest my entire life, and very few games take place here. We have the Great Lakes, Chicago, Kansas City (where I live now), St. Louis.... Missisibi River... etc etc. it's worth a shot.

That's a great idea... I'd love it; but what Todd Howard said it a recent interview was evidence that that kind of depth won't likely be incorporated into the series. He explained why they didn't include the multiple ammo types from the first two, in a way (that I took to mean), not forcing the player to think too hard.

@Kingman73:
:lol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N8BTyY_Uyc

~But I don't see why it couldn't work for a Fallout game though. :thumbsup:

Given enough complaints about the game I think he'd change his mind like he did with Broken Steel.

sigh :facepalm:

Seems to me if I was running form someone who was shooting at me, I'd keep on running, even if they wanted to talk.

I'm not a markey anolyst or a game publisher, so I can't speak to specifics, but obviously something tells these companies that you need to dumb certain things down to sell more copies. I imagine it varies which game attributes and such turn off which people.

I know the gaming media has a lot to do with it.. Morrowind got a lot of 7's and such in reviews, especially the Xbox version, and most of the complaints dealt with realism and complexity in the game, as well as combat being too stat-focused. Oblivion comes along and gets Game of the Year and 9.5's everywhere, because they toned down the complexity and made combat skill-based. Now, you could argue back and forth on whether the reviewers feel they need to represent mainstream gamers and mainstream gamers want simple games, or whether reviewers are putting forth an agenda to get more simplified games due to their own lack of "hardcoe gaming" tendencies or desire for more gamers in general... I guess that is an unknowable factor.



I guess it isn't, but game developers are constantly wanting to expand their fanbase and sell more games, to fund even more expensive games in the future.



I know your point, that at some point you mainstream something to the point you lose your core audience, and then no one is watching your show (or playing your game). Obviously Bethesda has not faced this problem though, as just as many people bought Fallout 3 as bought Oblivion, if not more so. Certainly more people bought Fallout 3 than 1 or 2 as well, by an epic margin.



I imagine many of us old-school gamers will face the death of games we knew and loved, or the permanent changing of genres we enjoy... that doesn't mean Bethesda is "wrong" in any way though. If you're going to sell a product, you want to sell it to as many people as possible. If that product is an expensive AAA game on a modern console, you need to make more money than is possible by marketing to a hardcoe niche crowd.

I imagine games like the one you mentioned are still out there, and will be out there, just in a more independent fashion. I know there have been several "old school" RPGs released on PC recently aimed straight at you and me, and the trade-off is they look like games made 10 years ago and have bugs and issues from being developed by a small group. Mount & Blade, Hinterland, Drakensang.. the list goes on.

Gaming is thankfully a very eclectic medium, much more so than movies or music. Fallout 3, Fallout, Castle Crashers, Final Fantasy... it's all games. This will not change, and games we want will probably always be there. The difference is what is a AAA multi-million dollar title and what isn't, and for right now games in that league are dumbed-down for mass consumption, and Bethesda wants to make AAA multi-million dollar games.

And seeing how I know about the M16/M4/M249 SAW and other US Military weapons as well (Since I served) I know there are huge weapon cache's in military bases. But we're talking the FO Universe here, and I'm guessing that about 99.9% of wastelanders wouldn't know where to look for good weapon parts since most of the US bases would have already been picked clean years before others could have gotten to them. Same goes for gun nuts and their little stockpiles.

So having weapons severely degraded and parts broken and all screwed up, 200+ years wouldn't be to far to see.

I worry that a lot of game developers (or probably more likely the corporate big-wigs behind the game developers) don't really give their audience the credit they deserve. There's certainly something to be said about not needlessly complicating something. But I do think there's a world of difference between what is simply an elegant game, and something that's just well, "dumbed down." One of my favorite games of all time has been Prince of Persia. Specifically the Sands of Time. I thought that was pretty simple to play. It took me a little while to get the hang of running along walls and stuff, but once I got the hang of it I was doing it all the time. And apart from a little bit of combat that played out more like a puzzle game than anything; that was really all there was to it. As the game went on, you learned progressively more complicated stuff, but they kind of eased you into it. The next two games added extra stuff on top of that format, but none of that really made it any "better," necessarily. I played those games mostly for the storytelling and level design than anything else.

The first one was a very elegant setup, it didn't need anything else to make it a very polished game. But it wasn't "simplified" by any means. It was just streamlined - like a nice racecar.

Spore, on the other hand - once I finally stopped playing with the Creator stuff for days on end and actually decided I wanted to try playing the game - felt (to me, at least) like I was playing a children's game. This is from the guy who made The Sims - the most popular "casual" game ever made. And The Sims wasn't "dumbed-down" by any means. I think it's a very good example of "easy to learn, difficult to master." The interface and the actual functions of the game were pretty intuitive. All you really need to know is that red bars are bad and that you click on what you want to interact with. Spore, though, didn't really have that.

Well, apart from the Cell Stage, actually. I found that portion actually rather compelling. You can't possibly get more simplified in a game than clicking on where you want to go. But it didn't need any more than that. I even felt that it encouraged a number of interesting strategies, as well. Where do you want to put your mouth? What shape do you want to be? How do you defend yourself from predators? The nice thing about the simple control scheme, was that it meant that how you evolved your creature was the most important part of the game - it actually complemented the whole point of Spore. Giving you a fatigue meter and a hunger bar wouldn't have added anything to that portion of the game.

The rest, though, was so simplistic as to be almost insulting, I found.

Anyway, I set out to talk about Fallout 4, and not a bunch of other games. I don't think Bethesda's the worst example of this trend, by far. But it does worry me to some extent. Honestly, I could do just as well in a Fallout game with no leveling, character stats, ammo, or any of that. If we really strip it down to it's base essentials, what I liked about Fallout 3 was exploring the world and meeting people. But even those portions could have fleshed out more. I'm a gamer - I expect a bit of a "carrot" to lead me through the game. Give me some reason to want to see every inch of the map. (Frak, even the Reilly's Rangers sidequest where they pay you for finding map markers is a good example of that...)

And make me care about these characters I'm encountering. That doesn't have to be through complicated tiers of dialogue menus and secondary calculations about how they react to me based on an itemized list of everything I've done up that point, or even that every NPC be a post-apocalyptic version of Milo. But don't tease me with interesting tid-bits that don't go anywhere. Don't give me an NPC where interaction basically comes down to "Hi, I'm interesting and mysterious. Would you like to know why I'm so mysterious and inriguing? Well, too bad - they only wrote this little bit of dialogue for me."

If someone hints at a backstory, let me find out what it is. You don't have to make it easy. You don't have to make it something that I'm even going to be likely to uncover through the course of the game. But if I'm going to talk to someone, just make it worth my while. Or at least don't tease me with it.

I think we give developers too much credit when we act like they know what they're doing. With the videogame industry growind rapidly and publishers trying to attract new audiences, I think a lot of trial and error is done to find out what people will accept and what people won't, what people always found annoying or cumbersome, and what people miss about old games.

I was playing a new Xbox Arcade game called Splosion Man and I realized it is basically a 2D platformer without the penalities that genre used to enforce, and I realized it was fun. It has speedy gameplay that requires some quick reflexed to manage, but at the same time it has checkpoints and a generally easy-going style that makes it more fun than annoying. Going back and playing something like Mega Man just reminds me that limited continues and such is annoying, not challenging... the same could be said for older RPGs in a lot of ways. At the same time you need to feel some risk in order to feel some reward... you mentionws Prince of Persia and I think Ubisoft was taught a lesson with the no death penalty thing...

In short, I think developers are trying to figure out what the gaming public wants much more than they are forcing us all to accept dumbed down games.



The thing this reminds me of is adventure games... I talk a lot about missing my old PC games from the 90s, and one of the genres I miss most is adventure games. The funny thing is, they were all built around a simple click to move interface, and most of them had no death penalty what-so-ever. That's the kind of stuff I would scream about if they did it to Fallout, but I loved it in Monkey Island... dying, or enemies I had to fight, would not have made Monkey Island a better game, would it? Would no dying and no enemies make Fallout a worse game automatically? If the sole purpose of the game was to explore the wasteland and talk to people to discover the story, would it still be able to attract millions of people to experience it?



It's such a fine line... and sometimes it makes little sense. As I just said, adventure games are extraordinarily simple, but loved anyway. Yet when I played Prince of Persia (2008), I thought it was too simple to enjoy. What makes the line and how do developers know what side they are on before release?



I feel exactly the same as you.

When it comes down to it, after all this talk of game mechanics, challenge and such, the thing I most thought Oblivion screwed up on, and that Fallout 3 improved on but not as much as I wanted, was depth to the world and the NPCs. The main reason I play a Bethesda game is to explore the worlds they create... Morrowind was such a defining game in my life because of that feeling of exploring an alien world, and seeing all the depth and lore they put into it. I would spend hours reading books in Vivec, or exploring random dungeons hoping to find a new NPC to talk to.

If I could trade all the FPS mechanics in the world for more NPCs, dialogue and lore, I probably would.

"Dumbing down" means a lot of things to a lot of people. For hardcoe PC gamers it can mean technical things, like enviornment cells or bad textures... for old-school challenge gamers it can mean unlimited continues or quicksave. For me, dumbing down just means removing depth and complexity from the game, removing long interesting speeches and 20 page backstories, removing serious and intense looks at mature themes like prostitution, addiction and [censored] and replacing them with with much more vague, cartoonish representations.

The very fact there are so many ways to "dumb down" a game, and so many desires on which are ok and which aren't, show why publishers are struggling with it as much as we are.

I'd relationships in a Fallout 4..I'd also like to view what my character looks like in a certain armor or clothing, like what you could do in Oblivion, but couldn't in Fallout 3.

I'll post more later i'm really tired now..

I think that's a fair statement. Just looking through this one forum, us fans as a whole don't even know what we really want.

Agreed. I think my "problem" with Bethesda at this point is that I'm kind of running into a law of diminishing returns with them. Morrowind blew me away when I first played it. They paid more attention to the architecture of their ceilings than most games at the time would spend on an entire level. There wasn't a single generic item in the entire game. If you went into someone house, it wasn't "Generic Wooden House #2," it was this specific person's house, as specific to that person's character as the capabilities of the game could provide. The tables weren't filled with a random collection of clutter to add some visual variety - it was filled with that specific collection of plates and silverware. (I mean come on - even today, most games will have one model and texture that every piece of silverware and pottery used - Morrowind had like half a dozen...)

I felt like a tourist in that game. I went to the next town to see what it looked like as much as it was to see what seemingly endless collection of quests each single townsperson was going to offer me.

The problem I have now, is that they already played that card. I go into a Bethesda game expecting that now. And I don't play a Bethesda game for it's combat, either. For the standard of games of Morrowind's time - that was as alive and breathing as you could possibly make a city. They have to up the ante now. Okay, we know they can do that. But what else can they do? The level of interaction with the people that populate that living, breathing world in Fallout 3 doesn't have (I feel) anywhere near the level of character exhibited by the dwellings they inhabit.

When you get right down to it, I'd be perfectly happy with a Fallout 4 that had no stats, skillchecks, or even combat. And that only consisted of exploring the world and interacting with that world. Okay, I can see this place - it's very effectively visualized. Now what can I do while I'm there?

i liked the dc interior very much,so: maybe a larger city part, without having to travel trough all the metro stations( leave them for special areas ) more buildings you can actually enter, no loading between building-outside, shooting trough windows. larger vaults(damn i love them)