This thread is so that we can keep all the discussion 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 has the right to 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 athis 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/1479708-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-171/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1479703-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-170/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1479694-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-169/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1479657-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-168/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1479569-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-167/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1479472-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-166/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1479392-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-165/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1479303-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-164/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1479198-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-163/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1479129-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-162/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1479043-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-161/

I have been looking into the clues left at the Survivor 2299 Site.

The latest Morse Code reads - "Calling any station, calling any station, calling any station, Boston is gone, I say again, Boston is gone, no Hope, frequency 3450, return transmission, goodbye/God Bless America" and the site name is Survivor 2299. From both this evidence we will be playing a character who was the bombs drop at the end of the world and is still alive in 2299.

Older code - "My dear sister. I'm heading to the institute. god knows what happened to this place. Now this old bastard will help us. He must help us. -0321-" to further support this the message reads like he is seeing the wastelands for the first time. Could he have been in some kind of suspended animation all this time?

Also see http://whois.domaintools.com/thesurvivor2299.com for proof that this site is real.

Food for thought. IRL: MIT has an underground tunnel network.

http://web.mit.edu/facilities/maps/mit_tunnel_map_10_2010.pdf

Vault 119 may very well be underneath the Institute.

Repost from the end of the last topic.

My gripe with this? It just doesn't sound like a legit ARG at all (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternate_reality_games).

A good alternate reality game builds and expands the brand and cannot be easily dismissed as a hoax. However, with survivor2299 there are glaring errors made. Most importantly, it doesn't engage the entire community. Creating a website whose legitimacy can easily be put in doubt is self-defeating. Right now, there is a sizable part of the Fallout community that is skeptical and doesn't follow survivor2299 precisely because of these doubts. They aren't deciphering the Morse codes. They aren't looking for more clues. Their interest in the brand is not heightened. Even the media is conflicted as to the legitimacy of the site and doesn't work to promote the brand. It's counterintuitive.

A good ARG would not rely on a site registered using fraudulent credentials. An American ARG site for an American company would not be registered using Poland addresses, hosted on Polish servers (even initially), using a Polish GPL countdown code that can be easily manipulated with the OS clock. A good ARG would not make elementary mistakes such as repeatedly changing a live page to add copy/pasted bits of code from other sites of the company it's supposed to promote.

A good ARG spans multiple mediums and actively involves the participants. It would not rely on a passive site where there is nothing to be found at all besides cryptic, dead end messages.

This is sloppy. For all my criticism of Bethesda, if there's one thing they're good at, it's marketing. We're talking about a company that's been present on the market for over twenty years, with access to top notch marketing agencies and very high budgets to boot. This survivor2299 thing is amateurish, something I would not expect from a corporation whose profits number in the tens or even hundreds of millions.

I mean, seriously. The Fallout community is starved for Fallout 4 news. Why would any marketing department choose to waste that potential by making something amateurish that feeds skepticism and infighting over the legitimacy of the site, rather than leverage that potential and build hype by engaging the whole community?

It's good PR, yeah. But you know what's even better PR? A site that cannot be dismissed and engages everyone, no matter their skepticism level, and leads to reports on every single major gaming network that a Fallout 4 ARG is taking place, driving insane tons of traffic to sites of your brand and building insane amounts of hype not moderated by skeptics.

About the polish thing: Do you know what a decoy is?

Is it a arg that will go in the history of this genre. No!

Doe's it serve it's purpose: It seems so.

My impression is that you can't leave out any oppertunity to say Bethesda are amateurs. Looking at their financial record it seems that you are wrong in this regard.

Only for remebering about ARG'S http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiU4AYPdIOw

Cool

If its real then this was a strategic move to throw us a bone and leave us rabid for more.

Site is still down, could they be updating it?

Wait a minute. It appeared on the 2nd anniversary of the Skyrim release? That's clever.

Infighting is good, it creates more discussion. Even people who are not engaged still speculate about the site's possible origins and whatnot. Also, creating an ARG is not necessarily part of marketing in the traditional sense, this is [censored] they're new at.

I hope so. I was really hoping for some concept art.

I just went there, and it's up. Nothing's changed.

It doesn't, which is what I wrote about.


M'Atra, dude, I specifically wrote that Bethesda is not sloppy when it comes to marketing. I might disagree with their practice of tight information control, but they're effective. The survivor is not.


It isn't. It fractures the community, rather than building unity and support for a new title. Consult the ARG list I linked to, every single one of them was professionally made and served to unite the community, rather than divide it.

Furthermore, Bethesda isn't a new studio. Their marketers aren't noobs. They have access to top notch marketing agencies. They wouldn't make a sloppy ARG, because they'd hire specialists to orchestrate it and provide them with an appropriate budget. Stop treating a multi-million dollar corporation that's ancient by the standards of the market as some kind of upstart, set up in a garage with a college dropout for a marketing specialist.

You guys know the mods have zero affiliation with Bethesda, right? They are regular members like all of us that volunteer to moderate the forums.

Why don't people seem to understand this?

wont load for me, but considering there's nothing there, BFD. this just screams amateurism.

Maybe it wasn't meant to be an ARG, only a countdown site toward the announcement later and a teaser. The code game is just something for people to pass the time and build up hype as Beth continues to build the site toward the day of the announcement.

I think we all just misunderstood what Beth is trying to do here.

I find it funny that some can believe that such a troll this good would spend their time on a Fallout game. If they were this talented there would be much better places that their

skills could be applied to.

I always assumed that there was some sort of connection with Bethesda in some faucet.

They are newb's at viral marketing sorry to say. Looking at the pics from "The Evil within" and "Wolfenstein" which was the first try. If you would set back a bit and look a bit more to the bigger picture of the survivor ARG and maybe look at it how it's happening and who is doing what you would see that it's actually very well orchestrated. But I know already this won't happen.

About unitying the community. Come on espescially you and some others here this split will never heal.

Which doesn't mean that I am convinced it can't be a hoax.

in all honesty, the site isn't that special. black background with 2 white countdown timers and a vault tec logo. heII, they can't even keep it running

Nope, there is none whatsoever

Dunno, I never thought they were devs at all when I first joined so not sure where people are getting that. I remember one site was saying a "fallout dev asks for Fallout 4 ideas!" (thinking a mod was a dev) and linked to one of these threads. Luckily, people in the comments called them out for it.

Anyway, to get my two cents in...I am starting to get a little skeptical about this site now. Having a teaser counter for nothing, and the same morse code formula over and over with the only change in the code itself.

"Wasn't meant to be." Do you honestly believe that the head of marketing at Bethesda Softworks would go to a shareholders meeting of ZeniMax Media and explicitly state that he's incompetent? That the thousands of dollars they pay him as salary were wasted, because they couldn't foresee the painfully obvious fact that a gaming community starved of news about the game would rip into the site and turn it upside down looking for clues? That ZeniMax hired a fool that completely failed to realize the potential that could be tapped? That instead of hiring a professional marketing studio like AKQA to create an ARG that could promote the brand far and wide, building up hype for the new title, they made a clunky, disposable website that could easily be dismissed as a hoax?

For M'Atra's sake, we're talking about a decades-old corporation, not a freshly formed company operating out of a garage.


They aren't. Again, you're forgetting who we're talking about and what franchise we're talking about. The Evil Within is something new without a fanbase. Wolfenstein was killed by the 2009 game.

Fallout is a thriving franchise with a booming community. No one, I repeat, no one would risk their job by making a crappy website instead of hiring a professional marketing company to orchestrate and coordinate an ARG.

Pray tell, how is survivor2299 orchestrated? Where are the clues scattered across multiple media? Where are the hidden pointers? Where are engaging elements? There's nothing. All you have is an amateurish website with a countdown, with zero additional input. Apart from an alleged message broadcast in violation of federal law on a reserved channel. That's not well orchestrated.

Site is back up for me now, still no changes.