If we can blow locks... It should come under the lock picking skill

that doesn't really make sense if its in lock picking since lock picking is pretty straight foward for picking locks. If it was put in an explosive check should happen with a chance of blowing yourself up or as others have said damaging the loot inside if your explosives skill doesn't meet the requirement.

Tell me your not saying that it's ridiculous FO4 would have a destructible environment?

Maybe you think we are talking about a 100% destructible environment? Because yes that would be ridiculous.

All the top next gen games will have a destructible environment to a point. Will you be able to destroy city blocks or

shoot your way through walls to get to a point in a building? Probably not.

So what will be destructible in FO4? We can't say for sure but we can guess...

1. Some types of doors

2. Some types of windows

3. Tables

4. Chairs

5. Glass objects / bottles ect..

6. Cars / vehicles

7. Trees / nature

8. Wooded up areas

9. Rope chain ect..

10. Electronics / computers ect..

I hope this list isn't over the top "ridiculous" for you.

As for walls I see no problem with the odd wall being destructible in fact I think if a wall is real weak looking

and falling apart you should be able to destroy it thats not to say all walls in the game should be but the

odd few here and there why not?

I like this idea and I actually thought of something similar. Yes weapon maintenance and cleaning should be a part of weapons upkeep and extend it's normal wear and tear use. This is how real weapons last so long in many cases because they are kept in good condition by cleaning and occasional maintenance. Some weapons would need less upkeep because they have a simpler more basic and in some respects tougher design such as the real world Ak-47 which can work even if covered in mud as some have said. Real weapons do generally last pretty long even with out it though not all weapons are equal with regard to durability.

So for maintenance they could add spare weapon parts as a in world object used to maintain a weapon. Alcohol or rubbing alcohol or something similar could be a in world object used to clean weapons or do so more effectively. When a weapon gets to 50% or less condition, then it would say, need to be repaired from another similar weapon. Let us say between 50 and 80% condition, the player can get away with maintenance upkeep, and 80% or above they can use cleaning to keep it in good condition.

Melee weapons however do and can break down though it may take longer and extreme conditions. A sword can break but could be repaired if you are a blacksmith or a metal forger of some kind or knew someone who was, and then you can have more in game skills or npcs to add to the rich gaming environment.

Unarmed should be affected if say your limbs are injured especially your arms, hands, or vision (say if you drank wine or something and saw the world fuzzy, you would not be as coordinated for any combat, especially unarmed).

There are other games with various levels of destructible environments already. One lets you break through wooden boards to get to extra goodies. Another has walls or even buildings that can come down if you hit it with enough force, say a missile launcher type weapon or several powerful grenades. Still another lets you set explosive on walls to break through or get around other wise blocked passages.

I can see how not shooting or blowing locks might bother you however, if your character say had a high explosives skill (so that they could do so properly and less chance it would destroy the building or wall around them or the contents of a safe or something, or hurt your character, or say damage the lock in such a way that it becomes harder to get through), then blowing a lock might be a good alternate option and another way to use a skill other than lock pick to achieve similar objectives. If your small guns or energy weapons skill is high enough, likewise you might have enough skill to feasible shoot the lock and break it. Alternatively, it might also be a interesting idea to have some extra options for a high enough lock pick skill so it can be used in a more offensive way such as, jury rigging a lock to not work with a key and thus perhaps lock some enemy in a room so you can escape, or perhaps to rig a trap to a locked door so that when an enemy comes through it, they will regret that choice, (say have modest explosives and high lock pick skill for an explosion trap, or a modest gun skill and a high lock pick skill to rig a shot gun for example as seen in Fallout 3).

More win conditions would be great as well. The more options there are to achieve the same basic and necessary in game objectives, the more non linear and free roaming the game becomes. For example if you had one or two methods to win under the major methods of achieving victories such as:

Diplomatic: High speech, barter, reputation, and Charisma allows player to broker peace treaties, trade treaties, and alliance to achieve overall victory and peace.

War: a combination of high speech, intelligence, and a good fighting record through out the game allows players to form alliances to fight a war and win battles against common foes.

Heroic: Player risks their life or sacrifices their life to achieve victorious conditions by bearing the brunt of the pain and suffering so that all parties are satisfied with the results and aftermath and praise the Hero's bravery and selfless actions. Traits considered include combat skills, Endurance, reputation, and karma

Compromise: Player achieves victory by achieving some needs and desires of all parties but not all and with speech, barter, intelligence convinces all parties they are all getting the best possible solution.

Threats and Lies: Use the methods proven effective by politicians for thousands of years. Tell one or all parties that they are best to resolve the issue in the character's favor because of other threats or because the player has enough influence to make good on threats and creatively use lies to back up their arguments. Such was done by Themistocles to double the size of the Athenian navy in time to make an effective defense against Persia. Karma would have to be evil or at least neutral not that Themistocles was.

Enrichment, Trade, and Wealth: Grow a trade empire so great that the player can threaten to boycott trade with one party or another and severely weaken them enough to make that party listen to what the player has to say or offer. Or buy out an opponent in favor of the player. Or hire a mercenary army or faction to back up player's will. High barter, great wealth (lots of caps or money), many successes on Trade choices in speech checks, many trades accomplished during the game, contact with at least one mercenary leader, trade treaties bartered, merchants invested in, and/or contact with all major factions involved might be some of the requirements needed to achieve this type of victory.

Status Quo: Leave things as they are or as they were before this most recent threat which compelled the player to action began. Neutral karma required.

Threat Eliminated: Remove one or more threats to all parties so they have nothing to fear and are willing to be diplomatic now that things are calmer. This is another heroic type of victory. Evil or good karma is needed along with a successful objective against one major threat or faction involved in the game story.

Imperial: Player builds their own empire and becomes a new faction. Game objectives would benefit the new rising empire without care or consideration to any other faction. Wealth and reputation are the major influencing factors for this type of victory as well as a few other related ones. Player might even achieve this victory by eliminating one of the faction leaders and take over. The leader can be removed with lies, diplomacy, or violence. Player must be evil.

Democratic: Player is named or elected leader of one or more factions and makes peace or war on all others that decline to accept peace. Good or neutral karma is required.

Creative Solution: Player achieves victory by a cross mix combination of all other types of factors until the total accumulated influence is enough to garner victory. Solution may even involve hidden methods of victory such as eliminating one particular enemy, rescuing a captive discovered while exploring, blowing up a bridge, capturing some unique animal or resource, or even marrying one of the characters in the game.

It would be kind of interesting to see some tv sets working and maybe one or 2 perhaps looped but with no human attendant tv stations broadcasting. We do see tv sets but who would decorate with a tv set that does not work? It is way too common in Fallout. Give the game and players a reason to have them at all. There were games that looped old tv shows and movies on tv screens that did not actually take up a lot of disc memory space.

I would love to see fewer bugs or as mentioned previously, discontinuity of the game story. However, in this case, I do not mean general game logic or actually history or events implied but actual game timeline events. Such as, when 3 dog praises the player for liberating Project Purity two weeks ago, even though the player has not actually returned with the Brotherhood to attack the Enclave yet. There are a lot of these little quirks in the game that throws it off a bit and maybe responsible for some of the game freezes or other bug related issues.

I have heard too that Fallout games generally have fewer bugs on pcs and xboxes but much more on the ps3, which implies there may not have been enough testing and programming to make sure the game worked efficiently and on par with other consoles.

That should be much less of an issue with Fallout 4 than it was with Fallout 3 and New Vegas, since the PS4s hardware architecture will be much more similar to that of the PC and the XBox One. And Bethesda will almost certainly be developing FO4 for the next gen consoles.

Don't overload us with dlc, just an expansion pack or two. Hopefully like New Vegas', which expanded the story of existing characters. Not like Bethesda's typical dlc manner, which do not do this, but introduce more stock, bland characters and leave a lot of questions unanswered, while raising new ones.

Just thought of a new trait entitled "Are they drunk?" where when the player gets drunk they are better with weapons/higher health and can scare enemies away at the cost of more penalties for not using it.

I will sorta agree and disagree at the same time. I don't think there were any Great DLCs for either FONV or FO3.. But I would like 2 big expansions to the vanilla game. I mean like 2 shivering isle size expansions... I felt Dawnguard and Dragonborn both had bad writing and were too small to be considered expansion worthy (thought Dawnguard was better in terms of writing but Dragonborn was better in terms of landmass). But I don't want it to be at all relative to the story of the main game. If I am dragonborn in Skyrim, why is there 3 DLCs centered around being Dragonborn. So instead of 3 very different DLCs I get 3 sorta similar DLCs. Just make them completely different from each other and I will be happy .. I spoke of Skyrim a lot because it is Bethesda's last game and I think Bethesda will be making the next Fallout title.

I suddenly really like the idea of dealing with a faction's stronghold by dropping some nukes in it.

What specifically comes to mind is the BoS stronghold in NV. Dropping a mini nuke by it's entrance causes a cave in, trapping everyone inside.

In terms of picking locks with explosives. If your Explosive skill isn't high enough, you don't just run the risk of damaging the contents of said lock box, but also "blowing off some fingers." Sudden and instant extremity incapacitation.

I get that and I have that concern as well... But what they could do is make is so things like safes can't be lock picked open, I mean come on who has ever heard of a safe that can be opened with a boby pin?

Explosives wouldn't work on really thick metal doors, so lock picking an hacking would still have their place with that.

But yeah I can see the trouble of just being able to walk around with an 40mm grenade launcher and shooting in every door you come across, would make things to easy.

What about dynamics?

As gear breaks down, as it's prone to do, it visibly looks worse. (Guns already jam)

If your headgear of choice is just a pair of googles, your skin tans around them.

The stronger you are, the larger you become.

You take damage, you earn scars.

You stay irradiated for long periods of time, you earn a palor (and go bald)

You wear heavy armor in the desert, you get jock-itch.

I know what your saying about being "that guy" because as of late it seems like most of the suggestions I've been seeing I just want to wave my imaginary stick at.

Especially this whole destructible environment thing. I'm with you in the thinking that it would, in a way just kill the lock picking skill. Like you said, why invest in a skill that only has a similar use when if I spend my skill points in explosives I'll get the benefits of lock picking plus the rewards of the combat aspects of explosives?

I usually agree that the more options the better, but this option just doesn't fly with me.

@SpiderBorland,

I'm gonna have to say no.(ugh, I'm that guy again h)

I don't like the idea of everything that I do/or encounter having an effect on my appearance. I design my character how I want him to look in the beginning of the game. Having to worry about spending too much time in the sun is just an annoying feature.

What if I like my PC to be intelligent and skilled in science? Does that mean I need to be scrawny and wear thick reading glasses? Now if I want him to be a little more physically fit (in appearance) I need to invest in strength......

This just creates far too many problems for me. I'm gonna pass.

What I don't like about destructible environments is that someone could just save before they blow open a door and try over and over again, much like speech checks in FO3. It's a good idea, but it can be bypassed too easily.

That's assuming that F4 uses the skill percentages rather than just a base skill level as NV did. I hope they stay with the NV way. I know F3 was closer to the originals but that percentage thing really pissed my off on more than a few occasions.

In Tenpenny tower for instance there were 3 or 4 speech skill checks that all said I had a90 percent chance of passing.....I failed them all. That old system just seems inferior to how NV did it IMO.

An Archery skill would be a great addition to FO4. I loved how the Crossbows worked in Skyrim and I could see it and other bows working, heck you could come up with a Laser powered Bow that fired laser arrows. I'd also reccomend lowering the skill points you get per level like half of FO New Vegas that way your starting choices matter more like FO1/2.

As much as I liked the randomness of the Speech check of FO3, I feel that New Vegas's speech check was superior and hopefully the right choice going forward.

A... laser powered bow? Like the one Chewbacca has?

Also, New Vegas has a pretty balanced number of skill points when the level cap is 30. Pushing it up to 50 lets you do whatever you want.

I'm sorry, but dealing with crotch rot in a game is just taking "realism" a bit too far.

"An Archery skill would be a great addition to FO4" said no one ever. Sorry but I don't really think a archery skill(if there is bows it should be under melee weapons or hell even survival if they keep it for the next FO) fits in fallout though the laser crossbow sound kinda cool like sticking a bunch of MF cells on the tip of the arrow and when it hits enemies a small explosion like the perk "Meltdown" happens.

I've said I wanted archery in Fallout a couple of times in these threads, so your "said no one ever" isn't entirely accurate. I used archery almost exclusively in Skyrim against human enemies. Bows and arrows are awesome. I agree with you though that, if implemented, it doesn't need it's own skill and should be included in one of those that you mentioned. Survival would make the most sense of the existing skills so that none of them would need to be renamed. Archery isn't a melee or guns skill. Archery could be tied into survival as a means for hunting-for example, a bow and arrow could have bonus damage to animals.

And you have to remember this isn't TES.

I just don't want fallout to be a TES/FO abomination

I understand. I was just making the comparison because TES is a Bethesda franchise as well.

I don't think Bethesda should try to combine the games either, if that's what you're saying. I just don't think archery would make the game too much like TES at all though, aside from both having a bow and arrow. It would be the same Fallout, just with an additional weapon choice.

Well in most cases blowing a lock from its inside not only requires knowledge about the type of lock but also the type of explosive.
I say if what you are trying to blow is an ammo box a slight miscalculation can end you up with no ammo and a few large bits of shrapnel in your face.

As a note - posting links to leaked material (even obviously false leaks) is against this forum's rules. This is Bethesda's official forum, they're obviously not going to be okay with something like that.

I'd like archery in FO4 too. Tribals most likely use bow and arrows.