- Take on more volunteers for things like consults, graphics work, coding, bug squashing, real life DJ’s, writers, consultants, etc. Keep it semi closed, in that the volunteers do not go and spoil everything, but you get the benefit of what happens in the modding community. Or the benefit of crowd development. They do incredible things there that everyone should get to experience, like fixing every single bug in all your games. They are that good. They also upgrade the graphics of a game like Skyrim. That is simply incredible. In addition, many games are bringing this concept to life. Like Infamous Second Son's Camera mode, GTA's mapmaker, Halo's forge, and Minecraft. There are many examples. I would even buy some for like 99 cents if you uploaded a few select ones on the Store as DLC. Find a way to make this happen. It has been a little too long. The point is that you are not limited on, "Oh this is a great feature, but we don't have the money." Are you kidding? Go look at the nexus and look at all that talent there. They would kill to work with you. You get free talent and potentially new employees for the ones that really stand out. In addition, if you have someone do some voice acting for say a dragon shout like, Fus rho dah, you release it on the trailer, everyone loves it, please do not change it in the game! It was crazy. That person did a wonderful job and I hear he is the one who wrote that language in a weekend? You really messed up there you have to admit.
- I think this might be a bit of a personal preference here, but I think when you are hiring voice actors you should mostly hire the ones who are also stage actors. Like Pat Stew. To me they are the best there is at what they do. It is all live and they really pour themselves into their work. In addition, I would LOVE to see Gary Oldman do a Bethesda game. That man is incredible and he played Dracula and Zorg! He is right up your alley. How has this not happened yet? I also would not mind seeing Sean Bean do another game as he was phenomenal as Martin. Did not get the credit he deserved there. I totally agree with Todd there. Liam Neeson was great as well, but you did already use him for fallout.
- Gather big data so you can improve the game. A good example, though it is not the same genre per say, is Destiny. They released an alpha first look (not the suggestion) and you could sign up, but they keep track of what everyone is doing, where they are, where they are dying, what they are using, what strategies they are using, ect. They also allow players to in game send feedback directly to them for say proof of a bug or what not. They are not the only one that does this, but it is the best example right now in terms of non-procedurally generated games. Also, keep track of what mods people are using and how they are using them. You would be surprised what all you can learn from this. After all, what is more important? What people say they like? Or what they do.
- Make the game so that it is like what the Division is going to do with their DLC and new updates. You do not have to stop playing; you just download the new update, as you are playing the world changes. It is an incredible concept. The game would stay alive for a long time if you could do this. If I am not explaining this as well as I should, I am sorry. I tried to find where I read this at, but I think it was a YouTube video near last e3.
- Give the player character a choice for what voice we have, not unlike what Inquisition is going to do. In their game, we will have two choices for each gender. You might think you do not choose a voice actor for the PC, but you do. He just does grunts and stuff like that. I hated the one in FNV. He sounded so weird. For the classic loving players who want their voice to be the PC, give the option to have no voice. Everyone wins.
- Make a smartphone companion app for the game. You people are missing out here. Things we could do would be like what the PlayStation companion app does sort of. Allow us to pair up with our Ps4, Xbox, or pc and use it as a touch screen to control some things in the game like the keyboard. Allow us to go through our inventory , customize our gear by adding dyes, paint, add-ons, mods, etc., crafting with built in tools that help us. Level up, read our journals, notes, audio logs, radio, and quest. Have it as a direct way to send feedback to you for the app or game. Add mini games. As you can see, there are many possibilities.
- Project Morpheus, Oculus rift support, Google Cardboard thingy, PlayStation eye, and Kinect support.
- Something I am worried might carry over from skyrim is the blocky faces that modders removed. Please do not do this.
- Make sure that your textures and meshes are as perfect as could be. In skyrim, a mod fixes distant landscapes with one single texture mod. This huge oversight should never been allowed to have happened, but did.
- Make the sounds as realistic or more so than what companies like Dice and 343 did with Halo. In dice, you have the option to turn on a sound mode called war tapes. They have this because they actually did extensive recordings to capture all the sounds in the game. It is incredible.
- Utilize procedural and generative generation techniques to cut down on the time it takes to do menial task, free up time for more important things, allows more animations, scripted events, and overall increase the world size. The best examples of today would be No Man’s Sky and Left for Dead I & II. In No Man’s Sky the entire universe is infinite and everything will be procedurally generated making the universe infinitely explorable. In LFD they use big data to help them shape the world by removing certain enemies, adding loot, and even new pathways. Generative generation or automatic programming is used to do automatic tedious coding. In some instances, the program can write its own code. In the world of Fallout 4 I am suggesting that it be a hybrid between these three concepts, procedural/generative generation and the work done by the artist. So the game would be less like a constant action thriller theme park and more like what would imagine in reality. So between towns might be big swathes of forest or wasteland that we have to trek across to get to a bandit hideout or mission.
- In first person, we should have two arms and legs. Should be able to interact with the world with our limbs.
- I would like in sneak mode for it to be similar to the game Dishonored, in that we have smart edge detection, and can hide in places you otherwise would not expect.
- The inventory system should be comparable to what The Last of us did, but fallout style and better. All items take up space and have a realistic weight comparable to the real world. There are certain types of inventory holders like backpacks, bandoleers, belts, pouches, etc. If you have them equip, the type of size and weighted items that they can carry are placed there by the player with his hands. Say you have two bandoleers across your chest, a belt, pouches, and a military backpack. Than we can hold ammo in those bandoleers, small items below a certain size in the smaller compartments, and big items go into our backpack, and weapons go in our holsters if we have them. If you do not have a holster, he has to carry it in his hands and store it in his pack unless it is a pistol and then he can tuck it into his belt line. Having more holsters means being able to carry more weapons. We should be able to carry up to four large weapons max and the weight and size limitations mean we would really have to manage our ammo right. If you have a mount, we should be able to place holsters on that too for weapons and some other compartments. If you only have a pack you cannot carry too much with you. When you open your inventory he pulls his pack off his back and sets it on the floor and the menu comes up of every compartment you have on you and if you are nearby your mount that shows up too. It is all simplified like skyrim. It does not pause the game if you are in hardcoe mode and in both it sends your followers into idle unless sharing inventory with them in which case they are standing in front of the PC and we simply hand it to them and behind the menu and they place it where it needs to go. If you use stimpacks or something like this than it queues up but does not show it in hardcoe and when you close the inventory he injects it and its animated. Thereby removing the ability to cheat and adding strategy and skill to it. Moving things around in the inventory is totally animated. You can see the PC and NPC’s move their gear around from compartment to compartment.
- Have Obsidian entertainment work cooperatively with you on fallout 4.
- Allow us to make camp if we have the equipment to do so.
- If you no longer want to work on the game and still have volunteers or staff that do want to allow them to.
- Use kickstarter or indigogo if you need to for funding.
- Make fast travel like a hybrid between morrowind's transports and such and the regular fast travel. If we are playing on hardcoe mode have them auto eat and drink when they need to. So we don't have to check that constantly. We should be able to fill up canteens and jugs. When we click fast travel I think it should show our progress on the map and simulate what it would be like and have the potential to be interpreted by encountering something in the world.
- For music, you should include things from all eras and not just the 1950's. It should be the focal point of it all, but there was time before that and after it in the world. Also in stealth mode if we are listening to music he should put in wireless earbuds that charge over time if we find, buy, or earn them. If not if we are playing music it should give away our position. If we are not in stealth, it should have an effect on the enemy like frightening them. Similar to what the tank crews during World War II did.
- Add in an advanced option menu that is initially collapsed with various fine tuning options for the player to take advantage of, to make the game the way they want it.
- When they game first comes out include a day one DLC that is free and allows us to improve the graphics of the game, thereby eliminating the need to have several disks.
- Our player and NPC’s should have a quantifiable emotional state in which will make us and other NPC's behave differently depending on what state they are in. It is not really difficult to predict what state someone would be in, because there are six-eight basic emotions and a total of 72. A writer, artist, programmer working in synchronous could do this job. You could make it optional or only for hardcoe mode. This is a rather brilliant concept I got from an indie game called Dungeon Crawlers. So if you are going through a den of cannibals and it is pitch black with low visibility and you are running into bodies on meat hooks your heart is racing like a madman (controller vibrating to the beat of your heart) and you're maybe not as good at sneaking or is harder to control to sneak or aim. You run into an enemy and you're a melee character and he just keeps hitting him even though he is down. (Pissed and scared) It reminds me of sometimes in skyrim when playing on the harder difficulties you kill a tough opponent and just really rub it in with your sword when he is dead. This would be much more satisfying adding to an otherwise flat emotional experience. I remember Todd Howard showing a picture of him winning a dynasty of NCAA. This would be like that in a bit, because they actually incorporate emotion into that game. Like if it's fourth quarter or OT and you're the kicker. You might also use procedural generation here to amp up the emotions depending on difficulty. The highest possible setting hardcoe, hardcoe mode would be the most realistic. You might even use Kinect/PlayStation eye/ oculus/ project Morpheus to track our emotion.
- I also remember another innovative game concept where you start out as a prisoner in the game that is about to be executed and the warden comes in and ask you how you want to go. This is not so much important as the conversation system is. When he ask you this you can highlight the option and listen to the characters inner monologue behind the decision. The reason why I did not previously suggest this was because I somewhat felt that the inner monologue of the character is us, because that is us in the game in a way. We are role-playing a bit there. But I think we could do a bit of both IF they go along with the suggestion to add optional player voices for male and female characters (at least two maybe four. Meaning two male and two female voices.)