Agreed. But they should be larger than just the settlement. Say, the actual playing ground about 2-3x the size of Fallout 3 and it divided into 10 or so nodes in the worldmap - containing the settlement or what ever location and some wasteland around it. Maybe even some big enough to contain two decent sized settlements.

Yeah, sounds good.

I like the way you think.

Why? How is that better than a continuous play area?

Because it allows the game to cover a wider range of distant locations without them feeling too compressed. Because of the compressed distances, Fallout 3 feels like a theme park more than actual Washington, DC. Imagine if someone actually tried to cram half of California (the area of Fallout 1) into one, seamless world. The more you compress it, the more you break the immersion. It's OK in an entirely fictional setting like Elder Scrolls, but just feels weird in a (mostly) real-world setting like Washington, DC.

And with the DLC (namely The Pitt and Point Lookout), Fallout 3 already is like in UnDeCafIndeed's idea to an extent, but lacks world map travel to these locations.

Exactly as PeterPotamus said.

It also allows for more believable and immersive implementation of bigger settlements with bigger variety to them (both looks and mental state).


Heres a shameless quote of my self from some time ago regarding the idea of a mapsystem I'd like to see:

A return to the classic worldmap system. The actual FPP/TPP playground World be roughly about 2-3x the size of Fallout 3; and the area is divided into 7-10 smaller sections which vary in size and content and are scattered on the worldmap. General gameplay in those would be about the same as in F3, run around and do local quests. No teleportation fast travel, since the places aren't that big, but when you enter the node you could spawn at any location you've already found.

Outdoorsmanskill is reintroduced and works similiarly to Fallout 1&2 with the difference that nonhostile encounters are always avoidable should the player so decide (to decrease the amount of loadscreens).

The worldmap itself is zoned in couple of ways:
- The farther away from the starting position, the harder the enemies and vice versa; but there is still a chance to encounter harder enemies on starting grounds and vice versa.
- The map is zoned into territories, which each have their set of unique enemies as well as a few commonones that can be found on every zone.
Each zone has about 5-7 small maps for random/special encounters, which are either hostile or nonhostile.

The nodes on map would be as follows: A settlement (Or just a visitable location like a majorsized building, militarybase, factory etc.) - with explorable wasteland around it to provide exploring and/or smaller sidequests.

They could even include two settlements, but in general all towns would be much bigger than those in Fallout 3.
Each settlement has its own set of architecture (not too different from other settlements, but so that one can tell the difference), clothing and mindsets. These are small things, but they can add a lot to the game. At least some visual variety.

Entering worldmap from a node would happen through the edges of the map. In Fallout 3 you get a popup message that "you cannot go further that way" - now it would be like this: "e) enter worldmap". To not have to always run to the edge of a map, pressing (for example) the mousewheel would open up a minimenu (somewhat similiar to Fallout 1 and Fallout 2) beside the cursor that would have various commands (like heal, repair etc. but that's not the point here), one of them being "Enter worldmap", which could not be used during combat or if there are enemies nearby. However, escaping combat through the edge of the map would be possible.

I don't think wider area as represented by an overland map is worth losing the ability to walk across a large, continuous area. The bottom line is that actual play area will likely end up being similar. That means that your many areas will all end up being very small, like they were in FO1/2, and that means that opportunity for exploration is just about zero. I'd rather have a large area to wander around in.

What breaks immersion for me is hitting map edges, and the more smaller areas we have, the more RESTRICTED I feel.

I would like to see it set in the commonwealth I like the thought of Massachusetts being introduced to the series

Well, I guess different things break immersion for different folks. I don't see how you'd lose the ability to explore with the nodes being big enough (say, Point Lookout size). I don't really see the appeal of "large, continuous area" if it's ridiculously compressed for gameplay's sake.

Though the thing is, do you really want to see Fallout just become another Cthulhu style piece?

Yeah, personally, I could go either way with the whole map size thing. Like you said - no matter how you break it up, it's still going to be pretty much the same amount of playable area. Honestly, I don't see Bethesda switching from a formula that's worked well enough for them in the past.

I think you may have misunderstood what I was getting at. I'm not saying to make the next game about nothing more than running away from Ghouls, here. It's simply that the most memorable moments I, personally, had with Fallout 3 were those times when I was low on health, running out of ammo, and creeping around every corner waiting for an enemy to pop up. Done right, a Raider, Supermutant, or any other opponent, can be every bit as scary to think is lurking around the next corner as any zombie from Resident Evil.

And those moments I really enjoyed in, well, all the Fallout games; had a lot in common with your standard "survival horror" game. Limited ammo, limited health, etc. And combined with a general sense of oppressive atmosphere. The Wasteland is supposed to be a scary place, after all. I mean, I remember playing Silent Hill, and pretty much any time that radio started up - telling me there was a monster close by - I'd just start running like mad. Chances are, I could have handled whatever came at me; but the game did such a good job of convincing me that I couldn't, that I just kept running, no matter what spooky thing it ended up being.

And I'm not saying to make the next Fallout game just another survival horror game - there's always enough of those; and it seems to be kind of a waning genre anyway. But it wouldn't hurt to take a page or two from that sort of gameplay, either. Entering into any of the dungeons in the game (abandoned houses, sewers, old factories, what have you -) I think should be a pretty spooky thing to do. I want to feel kind of unsure that it was such a good idea, each time. And not just because it's Dunwich, either. The first time I load into a new dungeon, I don't know if it's going to be populated by Ghouls, Raider, Mutants, or just plain crazy wastelanders - I think ideally, the game should feed on that fear, and expand upon that concept.

Just how much exploration is possible in the overland map system? How many playthroughs of, say, FO2 does it take to see (and loot) everything? I'm certain that it took exactly ONE playthrough for me to see all of FO2. No exploration there, except, perhaps, for the first time, and since the actual play areas were small, it was hardly difficult to find every sublocation in those small areas.

Exploration and wide open areas is a Beth hallmark. I would not want that to change at all.

That's because individual areas in FO2 were pretty small, and covered pretty much only the settlement. If each node covered both the settlement and part of the surrounding wasteland, there would be much more things to explore. If the whole area is big, it being one seamless area or cut into nodes does not make a difference in terms of being explorable. Think of each node being Point Lookout size. I think it would be a good combination of the Black Isle and Bethesda approaches. And Point Lookout is already a separate node in FO3.

One seamless area makes sense if the gameplay area is roughly the same size as it is in the real world, but the more compressed it gets, the more ridiculous it seems.

If there are plenty of things to do the size of the map is not an issue.

Fallout 3 is not in the same RPG genre at all as the first two Fallouts. They are completely different and it's plain dumb to try to suggest the next fallout uses a similar map system to the first. It's comparable to trying to put a cord on cellphone. Sure the old system worked for the first two fallouts and they were fun and all, but implementing it in the new fallout series would not work. The Fallout series has moved on, get over it please.

I don't know why people keep whining that the map should be similar to the previous Fallouts. The idea that having nodes is better than having a continuous world is absolutely ridiculous. It would just make the game seem choppy and kill immersion. The node system is gone, and hopefully will never come back, I've read through a tonne of posts on from these threads and the New Vegas threads and most of you vouching for this also seem to have a very negative sentiment about Bethesda and also how they apparently "ruined" Fallout, I don't know should I should be making a correlation between the two? hmm.

The way that Fallout 3 is setup is much better than the previous Fallouts, having a node system = more map edges + more fading out + jaggedness

Compressing so much land into so little game space is really really bad you say in a continuous world, how does this justify chopping the map up into squares?


What would be great for Fallout 4 would be far more quests and a main storyline that can diverge into two depending on whether you want to be a good or bad character.

Which is very much a pity considering that it claims to be a sequel.

For some people the nodes kill immersion, for others the ridiculous compression of the locations kills immersion. As I said, different people find different things immersive.



Because the nodes would represent smaller locations and the vast distances are represented more abstractly by the travel on the world map.



The node system came back when Bethesda released The Pitt, and then Point Lookout. Now we just need to add world map travel to that.

Because of the continuous world, it would be hard to make a game that covers as much area as Fallout, Fallout 2 or Van Buren, because having the whole of California or the entire four states compressed into a gameplay area as small as in FO3 would be utterly silly. And it's pretty damn silly in Fallout 3 already. Continuous world is fine if the in-game area is roughly the same as the real-world one, but the bigger the difference, the more ridiculous it becomes. And even Bethesda realizes that, since they put The Pitt and Point Lookout in separate nodes.



What would be great for Fallout 4 would be far more quests where the choices aren't about good or evil, but shades of grey - good for one and bad for someone else.

The node system returned only because of the DLC's and even then, traveling to Point Lookout felt very inauthentic.

The "vast" distances were done well in F3, in no way would having a world travel map random encounter system be better than travelling through the wasteland and occasionally find a some hidden loot, a few enemies and random quest triggers. The exploration and atmosphere aspects are the strength of F3 and it wouldn't make sense to revert back to that old system because it would only take away from the new game series current strengths.

The thing is the first two Fallouts focused on a "large" area in the sense that it was california and that worked for those types of games but F3 focuses on a smaller area and the "compressed" gameplay area works extremely well for it. Why does F4 have to have to cover such a large area like the first two Fallouts, what you think of as being inappropriately compressed actually made for a good game with very good pace (F3). Having a node system in the way that you're talking about would actually make the game very weary and draining, it's an shooter/rpg now not a turn based game. Having a node system would actually make the game feel more like a shooter or like Bioshock.

I agree that choices should be more gray.

The 'node system' hasn't gone anywhere - Bethesda just doesn't use it! (See Dragon Age - it uses a very similar system to the one of the old FOs)
A 'bad' system is one that doesn't serve the purpose of the game better and not the one that we declare to be 'obsolete'.
So the whole point is that even if that system had gone away, if it serves the game better then it should come back.

You could find these in the wasteland areas surrounding each of the settlements in each of the nodes. As I said, the whole area would be the same or bigger than in Fallout 3. And it might in not be better for you, but it is for me and many other people. Just because you have other tastes doesn't mean others' tastes inferior.



It doesn't have to cover a larger area, but we're talking about what we'd like FO4 to be like, not what it has to be like. Covering a larger area allows for more variety without things feeling like they're crammed together.



As I said, it would make it weary and draining to you. For others, the Fallout 3 system is weary and draining. And it being made less shooter-like would be an improvement. Everyone is free to express their opinions here, even if they're conflicting ones.

That compression of areas in fo3 creates a game world that isn't internally consistant with at least two of the key established themes of this series.
1: That almost all life was swept from the face of the earth.
2: That most the U.S. has been rendered a vast and barren wasteland.

This isn't the product of any kind of advancement, it's merely a compromise that favors a playstyle that some people like, and others don't.
It reminds me of the tired old and logicly fallacious argument that FO3 is better than the previous games because it's realtime fps, and the others were turn based iso, which is clearly inferior.
Injecting my own sense of humor into this, i'd say a comparable argument would be to say that spanish tiles are superior to cheese. There just isn't a logical argument to either position, they both have their pros and cons, and it all mostly comes down to who screams their opinion the loudest and the most frequently.

Making a system of nodes won't necessarily improve on those two points.

You can only maintain that position by ignoring points made by previous posters. Furthermore, it doesn't by itself achieve this. Just look at the previous poster's comments. We already had this with the dlc, but it was clumsily implemented through little more than teleport scripts tied to static objects. If it was something you could do from your pipboy, and it actually reflected graphicly (albeit somewhat symbolicly) the distance traveled and taken to get there, it would at least give some feedback to the player. Having possible diversions along the way in the vein of random encounters and non critical but still interesting locations, is just icing on the cake. I'm sure it could be fleshed out even more than that if someone just put a little thought into it.

So what exactly would you propose "happen" when you're traveling between nodes.

I'd propose that there's no need to reinvent what already worked well. Ie, give the player a large overland map where the player is represented between locations as a traveling blip. As the blip passes through different areas, the game calculates stat based rolls on the likelihood of random encounters, and rolls them against whoever is in the area, taking into account certain tracked stats such as outdorsman skill, perception, hostility, whether or not they're specifically hunting for you, etc. You also could discover smaller secret areas as you pass them on this map, opt to change direction to go there, and then have the game world load in at that specific world cell. The random encounters would work the same way except that the cells would be more of a general wasteland cell, and traveling to them would be a mix of consensual and forced based on rolls. You could encounter travelers, caravans, random weirdness, or roving hostiles. All of these cells could employ careful use of line of sight blocking terrain, thick fog or dust storms, or they could still render an lod to make the useable area appear larger than it is. But it wouldn't need to be small in any way, as the geck is fully capable of roughing out large territories rather quickly. When you're finally done with the random encounters and random scenic pitstops and arrive at your destination, you'd be loaded into that big but physically separate location.

Another benefit to this system is that it makes implementing dlc and player made locations a snap. No need to integrate it into the release game's lanscape, you simply create a unique cell and mark it in the world map.

Yeah, uhm - plenty of RPGs work on a "node" system (like has been said - Dragon Age, Mass Effect, most of your JRPGs, etc,) and do it quite well. I think it just depends on the sort of game; and the scope and variation of the area you're trying to portray. Something like Mass Effect, where you're depicting a game world spanning entire solar systems - obviously that's not going to be one continuous play area - it might be kind of cool to seamlessly travel across the entire universe; but it works just as well to have a series of interconnected nodes, as well. And something like Dragon Age, where you're covering a large area; and with an intent to having a wide variety of different geographic and stylistic areas to explore - that works better in that manner, as well.

And Fallout 3, for better or worse, is quite a departure from the previous games in the series. There's no way everyone's going to agree with everything that was done. It's like if Bethesda decided to make the next Elder Scrolls a turn-based game overhead game that with a playable area that's spread out amongst a series of nodes encompassing an entire continent. It wouldn't necessarily make for a terrible game - but it would probably upset a lot of it's current fanbase.

I still don't think there's any real need to change how it works in Fallout 3, however. Not to mention it's probably better to have a company stick with what they know, and what they do best. Bethesda does the big "wide-open world" thingy. They might not be terribly experienced with a different system of representing their world - and it could possibly lead to a lower-quality game if they were to do poorly making a "node" system of travel.

Personally, I just wish we could get off the "Fallout 3 is a huge leap forward in every concievable fashion" concept, though. It's a good game. There's a number of things they did in that game that I think they did better than in Fallout 1 or 2. But I also think they dropped the ball on some other things. Fallout 1 => Fallout 3 just isn't the sort of advance I'd equate as the same thing as, say Horse-Drawn Carriage => Rolls Royce. I see it more as - about a decade ago I had a really good peanut butter and jelly sandwich; and then ten years later some other company comes out and gives me really good peanut butter and jelly-flavored ice cream. That's great and all, but if I'm still looking for the perfect PB&J sandwich, I'm simply not going to see that flavored ice cream as such an all-encompassing advance that I'm never going to "take a step backwards" and eat an actual PB&J sandwich again...