while i agree with some of what youre saying.. i find this post to be extremely ironic.

How about this - why doesn't everyone come up with ideas that they would like to see in Fallout 4; and I'll worry about suggesting ideas that I would like to see in Fallout 4? I mean, I don't see how this got so complicated beyond that simple premise in this thread. Bethesda's going to make the game they want to make, anyway - it's not like there was ever a risk of them building a whole new game solely based on the feedback from this forum, anyway. At most we could expect the possibility of someone reading through these threads and spotting one or two ideas that they hadn't actually thought of before, and using them.

It's not like I expect any of the additions I've suggested to actually make it into the game - regardless of whether that hypothetical game would be more "Bioware-ish" than "Bethesda-ish."

But when it comes down to it, a forum is about people talking about their opinions. I have mine, and a lot of the other "Fallout traditionalists" have theirs as well. The simple fact is that if I have an opinion about where I'd like to see the next game go, or a reaction to a proposed suggestion in this thread - this is where I'm going to be talking about it.

Back on topic - I'd like to see just an insane amount of Perks next time around. To the degree that they'd have to lump them into categories so the player can make sense of them all. And I also think we could probably do away with Perks that just boost a skill by 5 points or so.

I agree. I may have appeared to be hardcoe pro-bethesda but really its because I've been reading through the forums for a while and read through an overwhelming amount of Beth-hate posts ex. "Beth ruined the game", "Oblivion with guns" ect. I'm just sick of the anti-beth everywhere in the subforum.

I like the perk idea, I found the skill boosting perks to be a waste of time.

If the next game also incorporated charisma better then it'd be an improvement too. Aside from being able to skip a few quest tasks and accessing extra dialogue options, charisma was kind of useless imo.

I could see retaining the skill-boosting perks, however the current setup of having a ton of skill books lying around does make them a bit redundant unless one is doing a survivalist-type RP (as some of my characters are doing) in which the books will not be used.

In FO1 and 2 you could get a ton of books for the 5 skills that had them, however you could not raise those skills above 100 (sometimes 101) via books, so with the 200 or 300 cap there was still plenty of room to add more points to those skills. The books also worked differently than the ones in FO3; you started out getting multiple points per book, and the closer you got to 100 the fewer points they gave until you were getting 1 per book in the 90s.

FO3, however, has a 100 cap and books for every skill, so it's easy to end up with too many SP even with a low INT stat since use of books quickly caps out a given skill causing you to have to put points elsewhere whether you wanted to or not. The bobbleheads don't help either, as any stat+skill pairing (INT+Science, for example) adds 12 points to a given skill.

If they borrow a page from FO1 and raise the skill cap to 200, then SP perks will be more useful as capping out a given skill will be more difficult even with a lot of skill books. Assuming they kept Educated and 25 books per skill, then instead of being able to cap a skill out by adding SP until it hit 38, getting both related bobbleheads, and reading all 25 books with Educated, you would need to run it to 138 which is about 5 times the SP investment assuming the skill started at 18 (which is fairly standard for a non-tagged skill with moderate SPECIAL backing). It is worth noting here that Tagging a skill worked differently as well, it added 30 points (in FO2 it added 30% due to scaling SP costs) and caused each point added when leveling up to raise the skill by two instead of one (FO2's scaling costs meant that you would need half as many SP per point of increase instead).

I, for one, do NOT want to see the scaling SP per skill bracket return unless the amount does not exceed, say, 2 to 3 points per point of increase and then only at the highest levels for a given skill.

stupid question but does this mean that there will be another fallout after/before new vegas?

I believe Bethesda said they plan to continue to make Fallout games, Fallout 4 will most likely come out after New Vegas.

I would personally love the karma system to play a much more involved and significant role this time in shaping AND personalising our own respective journeys as vault dwellers. Imagine for example the possibilities in the context of a setting as rich and detailed as the Capital Wasteland or The Commonwealth if you called the shots for once in the game. Imagine if your karma level actually determined how the story unfolded with a new found emphasis on OUR own adventures rather than Beth's because as much as I LOVED Fallout 3 to death... it has to be said that regardless of whether you had good, bad or neutral karma and the choices you made they each had very little impact on the overall story/progression and it still felt a little claustrophobic/boxed-in/rigid with not very much opportunity for deviation from the garden path so to speak.

So here's just a minor suggestion in the form of an example of small step, e.g. what if your morality determined whether your allegiance was to the Enclave or the Brotherhood in Fallout 3 for instance and after project purity you'd have woken up in either an Enclave infirmary or a Brotherhood infirmary with completely separate mission strands which involved taking down the other fraction or the same mission areas but from the point of view of the other side of the fence.

Also not all 'enemy' NPC's out in the wastes such as Raiders necessarily have to be hostile to Evil characters. Ghoulification would be awesome idea. What if the penalty for perpetually ignoring warning signs about Rads was permanent Ghoulification which meant feral ghouls and reavers were friendly and would back you up like the that stranger perk when faced with say a barrage of super-mutant behemoths but as a consequence you were denied entry into certain locales like Tenpenny Tower, Rivet City, Raven Rock or The Citadel in FO3 and instead given different options.

What if certain choices led to distinctly unforeseen events which happen in certain games under certain conditions and then the next day talking to friends about your adventure in the Wastes being markedly different experiences compared to theirs, e.g. you while were captured by Mariposa/midwest Super-mutants and experimented on as a result of your choices during your travels your friend might have joined Brotherhood outcasts which may have lead to something completely different or while your friend may have been captured by Slavers and sold on to the Pitt, you might actually help run the Pitt in your game as an Evil character who made the right choices and never have gone through the Lone Wander's horrendous ordeal in the first place.

If you guys ever take us back to the New California Republic what about just totally rebooting the franchise with a prequel to the original fallout using the pre-war period as the introduction/training sequence and go to town on it. Embellish and the alternate history/retro-futuristic vibe in a mini-movie introduction with awesome visuals anolysing the pre-and-post 'great war' periods with extended flashback sequences throughout an epic new trilogy involving OUR own protagonist, where decisions you make throughout the trilogy have real and extended consequences in shaping your specific turn of events throughout the entire journey.

Edit: While I understand Bethesda want to create their own distinctive masterpiece with all their hallmarks while staying true to the original Fallout(s), please do take a slither of a page from BioWare with regard to cinematics and dialogue/options because it could be so much more fluid and naturalistic and that's being a tad generous. Why not give us a set of VO's to choose from and let the man speak? Romance options?

Also you could expand the range of mini-games available for when you're not kicking ass out in the Wastes to add some more variety into the mix. Lot's of activities with a 1950's bent. In-game TV would be an amazing first in the Fallout universe with 1950's Faux brands and shows and how about bowling with Mr Gutsy's clearing the lanes. Looting shops, carnival games, more options for shopping and decorating your pads and have visual trophies/souvenirs from quests stored all over your pads like an expansion of the idea of the Bobblehead stand, etc.

Yes, Pete Hines said that there will be more Fallout games by Bethesda too. See:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_4_FAQ

ohh ohh pick me pick me GUESS WHAT!!!! I have the best idea for your next fallout game bethesda FIX THE FREAKIN CRASHING!!!!!!! 'cuz u see we have all spent 50 to 100$ on yer game and you have done nothing to fix your game even after its still BROKEN!!!! So this is from me to you FIX this game so will buy your next GAME or go broke since no one will buy any of your bug diseased CRASHING games.

Again with your ranting? Many people, including myself dont experience crashing too often. Its a matter of tweaking the settings to your particular machine.

I rarely ever had problems with crashing

With a completely clean install, patched up to 1.7, and no mods, my game still hard locked about once an hour or less. Also had issues with save game corruption. I actually considered getting the game for my ps3, seeing as it's much easier to make a stable game for a single sku platform. In the end, the only thing that's helped me is running it in windowed mode (after J.E. Sawyer made a comment about it making crashes easier to recover from.). This made me facepalm a bit, as it's a trick I've used on previous unstable beta's.

I heard the ps3 version is more prone to crashing and bugs than the 360 version.

A good way to add some personification to the PC character is to add some voices emotes during combat or when looking for caps or picking locks, I like what borderlands did with a simple laugh a little cheesy phrase, adds personification

now a way they could do this is based on the players skills, and they're SPECIAL they would activate certain phrases to be said, example, 75 in energy weapons, and an intelligience of 8 would say something like "according to my calculations, you are now dead) in a nerdy voice or something

this sounds really complicated now that ive typed it out, but I think it adds a certain charm

also my 2 cents on the crashing - if it really bugs ya that much, play on a console, much simpler (If you have to the skills to and hardware to play on a computer, more power to ya)

I havent played FO3 that much but from the couple of hours I put into it I cant help but agree with what he is saying about Bethseda trying something different rather than reskinning Oblivion. Yeah sure the company may have brought the rights to the game, but it really felt different from the first two because I felt like I was playing Elder Scrolls again. I do like the node idea because it does help better with immersion rather than scaling the world down. Also I really think they should expand upon the dialogue choices that should have role in altering the world in some way it would help with immersion and to help give my character a sense of personality rather than something I just make up in my head since I disagree with those who say open world rpgs can't coexists with dialogue options and better story telling.

To be honest, I'm finding the voiceovers in Dragon Age to be highly annoying. If I hear just a few more "Can I get you a ladder...so you can climb of my back!", which is not only repetitive, but also OOC, I'm going to have to turn the voices down. The problem with voices in general is that I'd rather imagine how my character sounds then have the game provide something that doesn't fit my perception of how my character should sound. Dragon Age at lest lets you select among a few options.

In fallout 4 maybe they could do somthing like they are doing in mass effect 2 where if you have a game in Fallout 3 your actions in fallout 3 would effect fallout 4 like blowing up the citadel will have less brotherhood of steel.

the way borderlands did it wasnt annoying at all, if beth can find a balance then well be in good shape

Really, what throws me with the Dragon Age approach more than anything is that you only hear your character about half of the time. He/she is totally silent during all of the dialogue segments, or really any time where it's going to be readily apparent that it's supposed to be your own character that's talking, and not someone else. For the first 20 hours or so of my game, I never knew if it was my character that was delivering those one-liners, or one of my party members. (Not so much because they weren't distinct enough, just simply because there had never been anything to establish in my perception that when I hear that voice, it's supposed to be taken as my character uttering those lines.)

(Personally, I've never been all that huge a fan of the "I'm talking now because you clicked on me," thing that pops up in games of that type. I don't need the character to tell me he's going to disarm a trap, walk over there, or attack a bad guy - because I've just told him to do that in the first place.)

Frankly, I figure you either have it so that your character has a voice 100% of the time, or not at all. ie, either go all Mass Effect-y and have all of the dialogue spoken out; or leave the main character silent. When you get right down to it, I don't have a very strong preference to either approach. The Mass Effect thing requires a lot more effort on the part of the design team; and it's one more thing that if it's not done really well, it's going to take away from the experience. On the other hand, I don't usually start out with a terribly clear picture of who my character is - I've never had a terribly strong opinion on what they should sound like in those sorts of games, for the spoken dialogue to contradict that conception.

And obviously, if you just have a "slient" protagonist, then there are no such problems. The vast majority of RPGs I've played have went with approach, for rather obvious reasons - it's not something I spend a lot of time pondering, so long as the game is setup in such a way that doesn't lead me to question why I can't hear my character speak.

The only time it ever throws me, or takes me out of the experience, is stuff like in the case of DA:O; where there's little to connect that occasional voice to your own character in the first place. It just pops up out of the blue at (seemingly) random occasions, and I only eventually am able to discern that it's supposed to be my own character saying those lines through process of elimination.

Back to topic - I'm not too worried about this in Fallout 4. I have a feeling that we'll be sticking with the silent type once again, here. And I don't really have that much of a problem with that, either. The only decent way I can think of having the PC do much actual voice-over in the game would be to go down the Mass Effect road, where you don't know exactly word-for-word what you're going to say. (Because otherwise, you're reading the lines, then hearing them spoken - and that just seems redundant.) And (though I think there's plenty of potential for improvement and refining with that approach) I enjoy that sort of dialogue system - I also don't think that it's so all-encompassingly awesome that every single game ever made from now on needs to do it that way, either.

When do you think Fallout 4 will be released? I'm guessing TES V won't be released until 2012 and it definitely is coming out before Fallout 4, so when do you think Fallout 4 will be released? I'm guessing 2014 or 2015. I want TES V much more than I want Fallout 4, but I like what Bethesda has done with the Fallout series.

Indeed, I'd rather see Bethesda at least try something new even if the final product isn't that great. The problem is that they don't take risks, and they haven't been very original or innovative since Morrowind.



Agreed, player voice acting gets in the way of a player's imagination and it's always bad anyway. The only two RPGs I've played with full player character voice acting are Vampire: The Masuqerade - Redemption and Mass Effect. Both of which had terrible voice work for their protagonists. There are times where I really wished Shepard would just shut up as his/her voice work made me cringe. Unfortunately the only RPGs that had easy to install custom voice sets were the Infinity Engine games (save for Planescape: Torment). All you needed was a blank wave file, and the knowledge of where to put it and what to call it which was detailed in a readme file that came with the game. Knights of the Old Republic II's silent PC, and Mask of the Betrayer's additional "None" voice option for NWN 2 made me realize how much I hate player character voice acting. It's annoying and intrusive, and it's better not to have anything at all.

I still really hope the include some kind of weapon attachment system (that isnt a mod for us console players)

No offense modders but I'd rather have beth make a weapon attachment system with the tools they have in their studio and not someone who had some spare time to whip up a nice mod that can be passed off as a weapon attachment system

I'd like a weaponupgrade system that has both +'s and -'s.

For example:

Expanded magazine: obvious benefits, but reloading takes more time and/or weapon is more prone to jam.
Scope: again obvious benefits, but you'd lose your crosshair while wielding the weapon (to depict the weapon as a sniper weapon that is not too effective in closer distance combat)

Or stuff like that.

I've never played Mass effect. but I just purchased it from the EA store for $10. I've only started it, but the PC voice is almost annoying enough that I don't want to play it.

What I do like about Dragon age are the scenes during dialogue. I like seeing my characters that way, and there were only a couple times...and those times weren't egregious, that I thought the expression displayed didn't really match my character. I would have to say that the "movie scene" dialogue approach showing your character and team mates is substantially more interesting than the "normal" Fallout talking head scheme. It's also more interesting to see the NPC's reactions, which I thought was done well in Dragon Age. This system goes a long way, I think, in creating the sort of memorable characters that are often sparse in Beth games.

And while I'm at it, I thought that the party control system in Dragon Age was really well done. The tactical preset system was well built, the AI was acceptable, and the ability to take direct control of a party member was a lot of fun.

I actually agree with you on something for once. I really did like the "movie scene" chatting as well. It also probably helped that bioware did a better overall job with the various facial and body animations used during conversations. Better overall VO work as well, although Dragon Age was definitely not without it's stinkers. That notwithstanding, I thought the overall package was tied together quite nicely.