Fallout 4: Speculation & Suggestions
Thread #9
This topic is for ideas and suggestions for Fallout 4 so that we can keep all the discussion in one thread. Other very 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.

Previous Threads

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=978480
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=995631
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1010129
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1023429
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1039919
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1046887
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1053029
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1059928

What I'd like to see on the subject of item degradation and repair is something along the following lines (a harsh example):

Slower degradation in general, but scaled so that the lower the CND, the faster the weapon/armor wears down. I also would like to see a more drastic effects on conditon changes.

Repairing would happen with repairkits, that repair around 10 points/use; or by gunsmiths in towns/caravans. The kits would have 5 to 10 uses each and their weight would be dependant on how much uses they have left. Amount of repairing is dependant on repairskill and current condition. They (kits) would not be too common or cheap.

One would now be able to repair guns and armor beyond his/her skill, but after the guns/armors condition is above the skill, the amount going above is turned into percentages that is taken away from the amount of repair. IE: skill = 30 and rifles condition = 80. Condition - skill = 50. 50% of repairkits potential (10) is 5. So trying to repair a weapon in condition of 80 with a repairskill of 30 would lower the amount of repair to 5.

So now you no longer need a duplicate to repair, but you would be able to attempt to sacrifice a duplicate (skill - CND = chance of success, for example) in order to boost the amount of repairing a bit if you wanted to, but of course you would loose the gun and the money it is worth.

I would really like the old map system with random encounters and locations you can enter and then leave to the map view but I guess that's never gonna happen, huh?

I wouldent mind see a more better chacter delvopment with more use on S.P.E.C.I.A.L like FO1 and 2 had and with traits with more usful medicine skill and what doest relie fully in stimpacks.
with stats and perks taking on more roles in genral dialogue and gameplay

and repeatable quests (but big over top ones) mor elike perhaps working as boucner in a bar, taking a hit out on som random perosn(with name and locatiosn the hit goes to) etc...

keep same liek big quests but more conseqences
hope the towns are same(no mafia towns or werid religions like in san fransico in Fo2) as (well diffrent but along the lines) as Fo3 as they were quite good.

Gambling aswell

and also choice to enable/disable soem of them mini game slike keep lock picking but disable the hackign one and vice versa.

more balence weapon types and to keep energry wepaons more rare.

still keep a good story in like FO3 though make it less on enclave and BOS

and if making DLC for it dont make involve G4WL

Off topic
also how was FO1 less restricting then Fo2 when it had a rather annoying time limit

On topic: i've made this suggestion before but ill reiterate bringing the game back to its roots instead of making it a carbon copy of the elder scrolls series.

Some posts went away.

The title of this thread is FALLOUT 4 Speculation and suggestions. Not "retread a debate about the older Fallout games and Fallout 3", amirite?

I'd love to see manual skillbased healing and fixed (non-skillscaled) stimpaks make a return.

So what follows is a couple of suggestions. I'll number them as some are far longer than others

1.
I think a pretty decent compromise could be made in the map function.

The benefits of Fallout 3 were that it was a massive massive area once could traverse from one end to the other coming across random things and finding new buildings and what not. It's shortcoming in my opinion, was that given the large number of buildings one could interact in the space given it became somewhat compacted.

The benefits of Fallout 1/2 were that the map allowed for Random Encounters (they were still in F3 but not as Random as they were guaranteed in certain locations) and having such a large World Map aided in the creating a sense of a large mostly empty world.

I think if you took a Fallout 4 made in the tradition of Fallout 3 or the TES Series, only hopefully 1.5 to 2 times as big, and sectioned it into say between 9 (3 columns and 3 rows) or 12 (4 columns and 3 rows) then inserted between these individual zones a large wasteland wherein Random Encounters could take place and the Outdoorsman skill could be revived it would be a significant improvement.

This would reintroduce the problem of invisible walls which svck mightily, but might be to some degree lessened by a message in the vein of "Before you looms a vast wasteland. It offers you only a drawn out and lonely death," When approaching what in Fallout 3 were the World Borders and a message in the vein of "You are leaving the settlement/region/zone known as *****" when you leave on of the zones proposed in my 3x3 or 4x3 idea.

In short i think given that the Fallout series is based around exploring a wasteland the travel system introduced by Fallout 1/2 is not sufficient but neither is the one used by Fallout 3. I think the best possible solution lies, as it so often does, somewhere in the middle.


2.
I really enjoyed Dunwich and would love an area similar to The Necropolis only in the style of Fallout 3. For those unfamiliar The Necropolis was a huge underground area filled with ghouls. Think the sewers under Tenpenny Tower only far more vast. Truth be told i really enjoyed the way that Fallout 3 featured ghouls. Some of my favorite gameplay time was skulking around Dunwich/Tenpenny Sewers with a Hunting Rifle searching out those nice Sneak Head Shot Criticals on ghouls.

3.
In general i think Fallout 4/New Vegas would benefit greatly from more humans in basic gear and less humans in Power Armor or Supermutants. After getting to the point that i met Supermutants and the Enclave i still found myself searching out Ghoul/Raider/Talon Company encampments so i could blast them to pieces. Perhaps some bigger more thoroughly protected settlements could feature a rebellion you could quash/encite/lead. I think more simple villany in the form of armed people controlling settlements would be more interesting, particularly if they were entirely evil but perhaps just greedy.

4.
Also it's been awhile since i played Fallout 3, and even longer since i played the first 2, but one thing i don't really recall in any of them was a betrayal you didnt see coming from the beginning. I'd love to have an optional party member (say that slave girl...not Buttercup but...she had a British accent) at some point in the story turn on you. Preferably not for some grandiose and horrid purpose but out of simple greed/loyalty. Actually that brings me to another thought.

5.
For (insert deity here)'s sake don't have any more cutscenes wherein you in your Power Armor and Minigun are knocked out by a single mutant/group of humans with hammers, despite the fact that you spent the last 20 minutes gunning down exactly such mobs with ease.

Finally my last point

6.
I like having some good honorable BOS members for once, but i think the game might be better served by a more Grey BOS. Not as dark grey as in F1 and F2, but not the Knights in Shining Power Armour of F3 either. Even just having simple dialogue options showing that, yeah they want to save the wasteland but largely because a populated wasteland offers them more soldiers or business opportunities would be pleasant. As much as i liked Lyon's Pride i would have loved to have perhaps a second Act of the story wherein some Western BOS troops show up, wipe out Lyon's Pride, and become either a more Grey group to side with against the Enclave or a second group to wipe out.

That sounds a lot like the repair hammers in Oblivion, and many people (myself included) weren't very fond of it. Also, by attributing a value to them, you're forcing the player to make calculations before using them (eg using one shot of the kit, costing X, would aggregate how much % of X to the equipment's value?) which only makes things either unnecessarily complicated or opaque. Not to mention it does nothing to address the realism complaint --though admittedly, it shouldn't weight too much in a game, let alone one like FO.


I'm not sure of what you're proposing here... Are you saying hand-making the towns/etc, and leaving the in-between wasteland to randomly procedurally created?

I wouldn't call the BoS in F1 and F2 dark gray. In some aspects, they were even a lighter shade than Lyon's BoS (eg they had no trouble trading with outsiders).

No, he's talking about traveling between the individual areas through world map, like in Fallout 1 and 2.



They traded with outsiders because they needed food. But the whole food/agriculture issue was pretty much ignored in Fallout 3.

Fair enough. And it was a harsh example as I posted.

The main point in the suggestion was to move away a bit from the FO3 system, which I found annoying overall; and which - imo - would've worked better if I weren't drowning in duplicates all the time, and if the CND actually made a difference other than close to the extreme ends of the scale.

I'd rather have a more skillbased system which allows me to repair my gear to full condition, but doesn't make it easy and doesn't require me to lug the duplicates around where ever I go.

Another harsh example: A system that allows you to repair without any aiding items, but only up to a certain point (regardless of skill, unless the skill is below the estabilished certain point which would be low in numbers). The basic maintenance, cleaning and stuff, and after you get the repairkit (no living values necessery) you can start to really repair the equipement based on your skill (the higher the CND, the lower the chances of success/amount of repair, unless skill is equal or above CND) and add in possibility of critical failure that has a reverse effect to repairing a the same amount that, had I succeeded, I would've repaired the item (to prevent spamming of repair).


And I agree about the realism aspect, but I'm driving towards it here. It kinda fits better in NPC behavior and establishing the gameworld than gameplaymechanics, imo.

I don't mind the FO3 system really. An improved interface and a few tweaks would certainly behoove it, but IMO there's no need for a total rehash. It's fairly plausible and balanced, as far as repairing systems go. Also as for the taking spares thing, that's something I never had to do either. I just use ones I scavenge to repair the ones I leave home with, which also serves a secondary purpose of cleaning my inventory of the dead weight. :shrug:

I do agree with you though that the waepon degradation system need some serious attention.

I kind of wish they'd kill it completely and add more scavenging/weapon customization. It seems like the more popular mods (when it comes to Armor/Weapons) are the ones that slow item degradation a good bit and also the weapon kit/tailor made(armor customization) mods.

Well, to each their own and all that, but I guess I have to agree that it needn't be a total rehash - and it probably is more realistic to expect a modified version of the current one anyway. So I guess the question is, how would be modified?

Perks that slow it down or reverse it by way of some other in game mechanic? (Guns cleaned/oiled automagically at every rest/nap)...

it may have been said it before..

But since the aquisition of ID, it would be swwwweeeeeet if they used the Tech 5 engine....

More hand to hand moves, nothing fancy, kick, knee, head butt etc. Its just the punch the pc does in fallout 3 gets old very quickly.

More homemade weapons, I loved the idea of making your own weapons from random junk.

More options for evil characters, I felt a bit like I was being forced to be good in FO3. Also to be able to join raider gangs.

More statistics on armor preferably.. Power Armor IMO should be harder to get / less common than in FO3 too.

Hopefully Power Armors should be alot more resistant and powerful than in FO3 too.

I don't really have a problem with the current FO3 system. It is a bit cheesy, perhaps, but I think it's bettert hen the generic Oblivion system. On the plus side, having to scav weapons for parts adds a bit of tension...the need to find replacement parts for favorite weapons, at least in th early game. It also tends to have you make due with what you can find, in any given area of the game.

I confess it's been some time since i played Fallout or Fallout 2, but i recall them being rather greedy. You didn't get helped out by wandering groups of BOS and joining wasnt particularly easy. They traded but they traded because they wanted to collect all the tech they could. I don't know, i might just be defending my own interpretation of them. They came across to me as opportunistic, greedy, and more concerned with weapons and tech than people.

I really don't think you can possibly label them as more goody goody than Lyon's group. I mean the game itself stated that they were a more humanitarian offshoot of the BOS.

They were isolationists. I will admit that they were far from altruistic, but greedy? Opportunistic? Most of them had no problems with the average Wasteland citizen, and they never really insulted them or took advantage of them. That is unless you count Van Buren, and even if you do most of the Brotherhood disagreed with Jeremy Maxson's extreme views. They certainly weren't as obnoxious as the Outcasts are in Fallout 3.

I agree with that, I always thought that the East coast BoS are just two extremes of the "real" BoS.

I think saying they're greedy and opportunistic is going a bit too far, but even if they were, they still wouldn't be *dark* gray. They're really just gray gray. They're certainly not the white-knight heroes like Lyons' BoS, but at the same time the original BoS were much more open-minded (I'd guess you could say 'pragmatical') than them. Eg they would let anybody join so long as they completed the task. Sure it was a suicidal task that they didn't really think you'd survive, but at least they gave you the option. Lyons' BoS? Even after pretty much single-handedly saving they GRN outpost from the Behemoth, or after managing to escort a group of civilians through a sewer packed with Enclave shock troops, they still wouldn't let you join. Not to mention they simply refuse to even trade with anybody.

id like to see cars like muscle cars, sports cars, vans, sedans, wagons and bikes like harleys and skooters which you can heavily upgrade with stuff like rams on the front, turrets on the roof, bulletproof windows, armour plating and a bed in the back of the van etc.
itd be cool seeing raiders driving around in these pimped out cars
IT"D BE LIKE MAD MAX!!!
the game wouldnt be much about them caus most of the enemys are usually in enclosed places where u couldnt fit a car, like buildings and fenced off places etc.
itd also be cool to see ure best buddy in the game on a turret doing a drive by on raiders (just a thought maybe u have to put the ammo so its not unlimited, just to make things fair for the raiders)
and maybe to make things fare about having a car you hav to take care of it alot (repairs, fuel, ammo etc.) so u actually hav a reason to stop by a abbandoned mechanic's shop and you hav to think about bringing the car on every mission caus of the costs
soz for random and long post
couldnt keep it in any longer
btw do u think any1 from bethesda even flips over these ideas?

Fallout 3 is probably one of the best games thus far in gaming history. What I personally would like to see would be a workshop to customize your Power Armour, change colours, Urban Camouflage, Desert Camo etc add a human skull or two, add chains or spikes etc. Apologises if this has already been mentioned. Also to be able to have a new major location like New York. And some giant spiders and floods of tiny spiders (break out the Flame thrower) in the subway system. I'd like to see more units of the Brotherhood, in different Power Armours, Elite unit markings etc

How about being able to Pilot a Vertabird?