This thread is so that we can keep all the discussion, rumors and speculation in one place.
This topic is for a friendly discussion of ideas and suggestions for Fallout 4.

We all have opinions about what the next game should have and should not have. Each of us may express that opinion freely. There are points we agree on and points we do not agree on. This means that people are going to disagree with you on some things. Accept that and move on. No need to beat your point so far into the ground that no one wants to look at it any more.

At moderator discretion, threads about specific and distinct topics as they relate to FO4 and the rest of the Fallout series may be acceptable in the Fallout Series forum. General idea/suggestion topics for a future Fallout game will either be closed, or moved to this one.

This thread should be used to discuss items you'd like to see in a future game, gameplay tweaks, quest ideas, things you hope are not in the next game and so on. If you want to discuss major issues, use a separate topic - such as the discussion about adding multi-player or co-op play, which already has a thread. Please search first to see if there is an active/recent thread on a particular topic.

Something to note. Discussions of Child Killing is not allowed on these boards. Don't even bring it up in this thread. It won't happen in any future game from Bethesda, so there is no reason to even discuss it. If you post about this subject, you may be Warned and or Banned from the boards for doing so.

This is also not a thread to discuss current or past Fallout Games, other than to mention an aspect of the game you want to see included, or not included, in a future Fallout game.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1516247-fallout-4-speculation-ideas-amd-suggestions-250/

The Fatman rifle should not have existed ~except in the same way as the howitzer in Fallout 2. In FO3, it should have been findable, but with no ammo at all. Later the PC may find a shell or have found the shell first, with no rifle.

The Fatman should have been a town killer like the megaton bomb.... I'd say that it should have replaced the megaton bomb, and that the effect they cooked up should have been for optional use on any location in the game, be it a town, or a junk pile, and have the ammo be at most two in the game.

As for the scarcity of conventional ammo... They are the ones that made it a shooter, yet it lacks the basic conventions to make a superior one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q6UQ2QlRH0

I would hope that future FO titles take this a bit more to heart if they have them and plan on continuing this shooter style. Prior to FO3, the Fallout series respected nuclear weapons; after FO3, the series doesn't seem to respect anything, and doesn't even take itself seriously; so how can we?

@Synthoras:

Dr Zimmer looks down on the rest of the Commonwealth. That doesn't mean there are no organizations. He calls it a 'war-ravaged quagmire of violence and despair'.

The very fact that it is referred to as 'The Commonwealth' makes some kind of overarching, unifying identity very plausible.

Is everyone on board with fallout 4 coming October 2015, done a lot of research on this and everything I am reading on many sites saying the same thing.Everything points to fall 2015?

We will know in roughly two months. If the game is coming Fall 2015, then FO4 will definitely be revealed at Beth's big E3 event along with a release date. If it isn't coming in 2015, I would imagine there will be a reveal with no release date given, or a general statement like Coming 2016.

5 months from E3 could be a possibility I suppose.

It's probably to late if Fallout 4 gets released for sale September 2015, October 2015 or November 2015, but if Fallout 4 gets released for sale in September 2016, October 2016 or November 2016 I hope Fallout 4 will use photogrammetry.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is using photogrammetry, Epic Games added photogrammetry support to Unreal Engine 4, and now Star Wars Battlefront is using photogrammetry.

It's a proven technology to make graphics look very good and not have stuttering making the video game run smoothly.

Here is a lot of information about photogrammetry used in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/

Bethesda Game Studios can achieve some very amazing details in 3D models and textures using photogrammetry for Fallout 4, especially if I remember correctly back in 2005 or early 2006 before The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion released for sale on March 2006 I remember watching something like 1 new video each day that Bethesda Game Studios named The Making of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 or named it The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5. One of those videos Todd Howard was talking about he and some Bethesda Game Studios employees went walking around in some cites and in some forests taking pictures of different concrete deterioration, different concrete shapes, different types of tree leaves, etc.

Photogrammetry works on PC, PlayStation 4 (PS4), and Xbox One. It is not exclusive to PC only.

Of course I also hope that Fallout 4 armor and weapons break I hope armor and weapons degradation is back.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt CD Projekt RED made weapons have durability, maybe even armor.

I keep reading on the internet on a lot of different websites that Dark Souls II's weapons have durability.

I also hope there is absolutely no regenerative health in Fallout 4. CD Projekt RED said there will be absolutely no regenerative health in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Grand Theft Auto V has no regenerative health at all at least from what I read about the PC version of Grand Theft Auto V on PC.

Video games that are not set way into the future like the Halo video games or Mass Effect video games having regenerative health make me not want to purchase those video games, same thing goes for video games that do not have armor and weapons degradation.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim having regenerative health and armor and weapons degradation removed made me not want to purchase video games developed by Bethesda Game Studios anymore until Bethesda Game Studios removes it and adds back armor and weapons degradation.

This is why for 2015 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the only video game I purchased. If Fallout 4 gets announced that it will be released for sale and has regenerative health and no armor and weapons degradation then I will not be purchasing Fallout 4 at all.

Yes Witcher 3 will be epic, I think it will be one for the ages, and it will be better than Skyrim and I love Skyrim!

Dialog in Fallout 3 suggests that "The Commonwealth" is just another name for The Institute, as that is the region it's in, and likely the only place of any real importance/advancement.

Also, the area was known as "The Massachusetts Commonwealth" before the war, even in the real world.

Happylittlebooster

Yes, undermined the entire concept.

It's very simple to understand, any time you introduce an item that allows the player to do something that naturally requires a skill to do, you lessen the importance of that skill, and undermine the concept of having skills, because you no longer need the skill to do what the skill does.

Fallout 3's repair system was many times better then NV's for one simple reason, you actually either needed the repair skill to repair things, or had to pay out your ass to have someone else fix it for you. There was an actual system of trade off in it. Weapon repair kits broke any sort of balance within the repair system by giving the player an incredibly cheap, and easy to acquire, means of repairing things, that required neither high skill, nor lots of money. It fundamentally negated the whole concept of trade offs in skills, and was a best of all world situation.

It's a similar problem to the introduction of CoD style iron sights in NV. It undermines the point of having a weapon skill, which is supposed to influence accuracy, by giving the player a free pass on aiming. Iron sights made weapon skill even less valuable then they were in Fallout 3..... which is hard to believe given how relatively pointless they were even there.

I will say NV's did add a major advancement over 3's, in that stuff didn't lose effectiveness until it decayed past a certain threshold, but that was largely negated by the easy to acquire repair kits making all repair a breeze.

Tired of this pre-war plasma trash? The Institute's got your back! http://directupload.net/file/d/3964/o67zugaw_png.htm! (Hold your attack button for a moment in order to charge up)

@AwesomePossum: Yeah, Institute is surrounded by lowlifes. But does that mean that these lowlifes have no culture, no pride, no organizations and no economy? No. I hope they do. Even tribals and raiders have culture and I bet there's more than that in the Commonwealth.

At this moment in time a release in October is contingent on a reveal at E3 — which does seem very likely.I think with the protracted silence and numerous proclaimations of shorter announcement-to-release time that a fall (autumn ftw!) release is very likely, unless Bethesda does one of two unlikely things; either they release Fallout 4 in early 2016 out with the holidays season (possibly fettering sales) or they don't announce fallout 4 at e3 (unlikely due to the hype they have engendered and the vituperative backlash that would ensue).

It's the most likely outcome IMO, but that obviously doesn't guarantee a release in fall.It's also entirely contingent on an e3 announcement, if there isn't one then we will be starting at square one again.

Edit; I'm tired sorry if this is gibberish.

Frankly, I don't like the repair skill at all. I hope weapon and armor repair are removed from the game entirely, and something else take it's place, like mechanics or engineering which allows for construction of your own weapons and armor and anything else which needs fixing, besides weapon or armor of course.

I think weapons and armor should degrade very slowly with repairs requiring a trip to a weapon technician. Repair by players would only be possible for those with a very high engineering skill, so it would be more of a special thing for certain character types rather than something you are constantly doing on every playthrough.

...there's that really cool scene in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly where the guy takes the best parts from three ordinary revolvers and makes one really good revolver. I don't know if that's what they were going for with the F3 repair system, but if they had a skill that made it feel like you were doing what that guy did, that would be cool.

Well, Mechanics/Engineering/Repair could affect quest solutions, weapon mod pre-requisites, fine-tuning weapons in general, crafting and possibly even repairing robots and using Electronics/Hacking/Science to hack them to create a temporary companion (weaker than regular companions as you can't customize its weapons or have it use stimpaks).

Lots of things it could affect even if weapon degradetion(?) is removed.

Though I don't think that the ability to repair weapons and armor should be removed entirely.

Instead I think that critical failures should be re-introduced and that if enemies attack your weapons they may very well end up going instantly broken, forcing you to either ditch it, repair it or bring it over to an NPC to repair it. The whole degradation over time is trivial anyway as it is far too easy to repair weapons even with base Repair skill but I wouldn't want it removed entirely, just changed.

I think weapon degrading should be eliminated. I think we can just suspend our disbelief that our character maintains his/her weapons, just like how we do so that they use a toilet.

However, I don't have a problem with critical failures which can screw up weapons and require a workbench to fix, and I don't have a problem finding broken weapons that require a workbench to fix or get parts to make our own weapons. But the act of repair itself and degrading over time or use, meh.

Then fixing broken stuff is dependent on skill level, perks, and parts, and must be accomplished at a workbench and not while running in the wasteland.

I'm kind of surprised, but I agree. For the most part.

I like the idea of Repair being something more like Engineering or Mechanics, and I like the idea of not having everything continually degrading.

I'd like to see the critical failure thing resulting in stuff breaking sometimes, and I'd like to see that augmented by Luck, relevant weapon skill, and the quality of the item. I would then like stuff to be able to be repaired, but the resultant quality of that repair to be determined by your Engineering/Mechanics skill.

So.....

If you have low Luck, low Engineering/Mechanics skills, and you use the cheap weapons you pull of random Raiders in the wasteland....there's a good chance that poor quality weapon is going to blow up in your face at some point and when you repair it, if you can, it will be even crappier.

That could also be impacted by what you repair it with. A mod (I don't think it was in Vanillla) implemented Pistol/Revolver/Rifle/Shotgun Spare Parts that could be used for repair, something like that could be implemented so that you could supplement your poor Engineering/Mechanics skill with high quality replacement parts to make things better.

That way if you have a high quality Gun Runners/BoS/Enclave/Van Graff weapon, High Engineering/Mechanics, default Luck, and a high relevant weapon skill you will only very rarely have a Critical Weapon failure, and when you do have one you can repair your weapon to just about as good as new.

Perhaps even, with a high enough Engineering/Mechanics skill, seize on that "Good, Bad, Ugly" idea and strip parts from one weapon and put it in another weapon of the same class.

Agreed, I just don't think it's anything worth mentining to a place outside The Commonwealth.

This I can agree with.

Item decay is just bad overall . It's never balanced worth a damn, and never rally can be balanced for most items, since the amount of testing needed to balance every item in the game is far too high. It becomes more a hassle, for both the devs and the players, then a fun/interesting gameplay mechanic.

Something more along Skyrim's smithing/tempering system would be preferable, like what you suggested with weapons breaking after certain failures, and needing a workbench to repair, or perhaps a more developed weapon mod system, where the repair skill influences how many mods/how effective the mods you install, are.

Count me in. The classic repair system is quite boring and should be replaced.

@AP: Yeah, I doubt that too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpD_Ss5c2zs could be a future Fallout's intro song if it features Christians in greater capacity. Imagine the visuals and choose sarcasm or hope. Ambiguity is core.

War is Peace.

Freedom is Slavery.

Ignorance is Strength.

2+2=5

Make these the foundations of a story in the Commonwealth and I'll be pleased with the way you approach your narrative. Combine narrative and setting, they are the same.

Story is Setting.

Setting is Story.

Settle your narrative in the present, thus we can actually interact with it, instead of simply finding out about it. Exploration should grant you unique insights in present events caused by the Overarching Narrative Element (ONE). Fallout 3's ONE was the ruins of the old world. Fallout 4's ONE should be war. Not war between foreigners as in NV, but war between natives - a civil war so to speak - that is rooted in the history of wherever it's set. It's going to be Boston, as the Lord told me.

The thing about weapon degredation is that it hasn't been made to do anything that would ask anything from the player. It's too subtle in all accounts (how fast it goes down, how it affects the practice, how easily it is handled, how the rest of the game is balanced to support it).

I don't think it should be removed just because the concept we have now is [censored]. It should be looked at and tried to fix. It's the same kind of thing as with the TES attributes (not as significant, obviously, but the concept is the same: "not working like this -> throw it away™").

One way to look at it is that the 1-100 style CND scale and repairing it in minuscule digits with duplicates is just bad. If the scale was cut into 4 separate condition states (like "pristine" - "normal" - "worn" - "broken") and each state gave a significant enough impact on how the item works (be it accuracy, rate of fire, jam, reload disorders, damage for melee, bleed through allowance for armors, etc...) and the repairing was not handled through duplicates but attempts (skill versus item- and CND-specific difficulty) with increasing difficulty the higher you go, and also with the possibilities for crit failures (and of course repairmen that would offer a guaranteed repair for an appropriate fee -- and of course taking into account that not every tinkerer should be able to repair everything; a weaponsmith might not know anything about energy weapons; a toolsmith might not know anything about guns and EW...), it might well work. Where the CND degrades not so that a bar empties little by little, but so that each condition state gives a number of "free" shots (let's say 100-200) and after that every 10 shots the game calculates a chance (based on the specific weapon/armor at hand and it's current current CND state) for degradation one full tier lower (which could also be presented with visual change for the weapon/armor). If those are successful long enough (let's say 10 times), it does the calculation every 5 shots, then every 3 shots, then every shot, until the CND state finally drops and the cycle begins again unless the weapon is broken.

The key thing is to make it affect the gameplay significantly enough to make it an actual consideration for the player.

Exactly. Plus it should feel natural, not contrived (as with HC mode's prime needs, which are just a hassle - and simply can't be fun in whatever shape or form as I declare).

Every gameplay element serves as a barrier as we've discussed before. Barriers can be a fun challenge. Combat can be fun. Weight and weight limits can be fun. Locks can be fun, dialogue can be fun, character development can be fun.

In order to make a gameplay element interesting, you need to make it as self-explanatory as you can, significant enough for the player to consider, complex enough to feel like a challenge, rewarding enough to feel like an accomplishment.

I propose a 1-100% CND. Failures should drastically decrease condition, depending on the weapon and your LUCK - not your skill, which should let you properly wield the weapon in the first place. Failures that decrease condition by 20-50% (depending on criticality) along with minor weapon damage through enemy hits and regular use should do the trick. Weapon Repair Kits along with the respective skill level in both the weapon skill and Repair should allow you to properly fix the weapon partly - the amount of CND depending on PER and LUCK.

Or go with the 1-4 CND system, each critical failure decreasing CND by 1 lvl.

This wouldn't be the primary use of Repair, as Evl proposed. It should be a more general mechanics skill, heavily entangled with crafting and weapon/armor modifications as well as general world object application.

Than you cleary didn't read the dialog about it ingame.....

See:

"So tell me about the Commonwealth." :"The Commonwealth itself is nothing but a war-ravaged quagmire of violence and despair. Inside the sealed environment of the Institute, however..."

I quoted Zimmer myself. Why do you assume people from the Commonwealth wouldn't for example view themselves as Commonwealthers or have a unique culture or currency? I mean they certainly deal in caps, but why not have Commons when they could further establish an individual culture?

A war-ravaged quagmire of violence and despair certainly sounds like there's something going on there. Of course the arrogance of Zimmer (that isn't even necessarily representative of the whole of the Institute - Harkness was an SRB agent too) makes him view the rest of the Commonwealth as inferior (because they simply didn't achieve what the Institute did and remained in a state of chaotic conflict) but imagine the possibilities. Think about the tribes from Honest Hearts: Zimmer would ridicule them, but does that mean they're without cultural identity or achievements?

I would like to see:

1. More weapons and weapon mods: I would like to have a bigger supply of weapons to use in my destruction of the wastlands
2. More ways to get around the playable world: I like looking around the wastes when I fist play but not as much when I replay
3. Romance: I just find it better when a RPG has more to it, makes it feel more alive when you can connect to a NPC
4. Multiple states to roam around in: I liked the DLCs for both Fallout 3 and Fallout NV, they added more areas to see and fight in
5. Bigger DLCs: I like when I beat a good game and the DLC feels like a small but great game along side the main game

Why not play a visual novel or a bioware game instead?

Fallout [1&2] had no weapon degradation, and it played just fine.

I remember the game Super-Spy, a first person beat-em-up; the player could get a bowie knife, and the knife would dull and break after just a few stabs with it; it was nuts.

One thing that could use degradation is power armor. Offhand it sounds terrible, and the original games didn't need it, but the original games were not a dress-up fantasy that encouraged swapping though dozens out outfits. In Fallout, once you got the power armor there was [quite sensibly] no reason to ever take it off... as it should be.

The problem comes from developers themselves. They see this and decide that the [human tank] power armor must be crippled ('Harrison Bergeron' style) so that the rags and plastic armors get a fair chance.

In practice, the PA suits would need after action tune ups; weekly tune ups, and they would need specialized tools to do it. In FO4 and beyond, the PA suits could effectively become a power-up that the player wears when they truly need it; but otherwise keep in their home; or their car trunk. The PA suits would provide superb protection [even immunities], but would be expensive as hell to get repaired by a specialist. Also, IMO the suits should not fit in inventory, and weigh a lot more that they erroneously did in Fallout 1 & 2. This would have the effect that PCs may have to decide to leave it on the ground, rather than give up enough items to carry it ~if they are strong enough to carry it; and if they need or don't have Buffout. The second effect, is that the game can then have areas where it's next to impossible to bring power armor. One could not climb down a manhole wearing a PA suit; nor even fit the parts through one. One could not ascend rickety or burning [wooden] steps wearing one, or cross a plank between roof tops without leaving the suit behind.

This would allow us to have real PA suits as per the series description, and not the laughably http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/absurd_zps225aa541.jpg.