Over all the Fallouts that I've played from since the first one, only since Fallout 3(Bethesda taking over) has there been respawn rates. In my opinion respawn is one of the worst things in games, not only does it defeat those who are completionists who like to clear all places for good, but it makes it very immersion breaking and unrealistic. For instance, I clear one spot or loot an abandoned house, come back a day or two later and all of a sudden that house is fully restocked and those raiders are back in the same number, in the same exact spots. To me, once I clear a place, I like it to stay cleared, at the most some places could spawn but with fewer or stronger enemies, but only once or twice before it didn't anymore(ie. its considered a death trap and its would be avoided by enemies). Again, this is just my opinion, but I feel that in an infinite play game that random encounter spawns located throughout landscapes are more than enough to satiate those who continue playing after games end. I mean, if you do every side quest, loot every area, complete the game, and do all the other things that grant XP you are not going to need locations to respawn over and over to get experience and clearing the same place twice is just tedious. I suppose developers think its a way to keep people interested but for me it only makes me want to stop playing because everything I do means nothing as it will just come back in about 24 hours or close to it. You might think, well you can always mod the respawn so it never occurs, and that used to be an easy thing, but starting with New Vegas it seems like Bethesda has been trying to make it more and more impossible to stop respawns. In New Vegas, they placed event triggers and area triggers that would constantly respawn the enemies in certain areas regardless of your respawn rate. The only way to stop this was to go into G.E.C.K and delete them, but doing so would cause them to never spawn period and so you might miss out on certain things, so you had to do the enable/disable mod dance.

When Skyrim first came out there were two respawn counters, aside from the merchant list respawns, one for cleared locations and one for general respawns. In the beginning you could use the Creation Kit to set those respawns so high that they would never happen in a single play-through. However, this caused certain targets to be automatically marked for deletion by the game after their corpse sat for a little while with no respawn, which in turn would break several of the radiant quests which depended upon generic targets instead of specially created targets spawned specifically at the time of the start of the quest. Bethesda apparently realized this and must have hard-coded respawns into the game, as no matter what I've done with the main respawn rates, it seems to only affect containers, as objects in most areas as well as enemies are respawned after the base period of time. I'm not sure how difficult Fallout 4 will be to stop respawns since the G.E.C.K won't be coming out till a few months into next year, but I would just like to throw out an idea to Bethesda to just remove the respawns as they are. Fallout 4 has seen the coming of many changes to Bethesda games as we know them, especially Fallout, and we've also seen the removal of things we've come to know(Skills, Karma-which I kind of miss, etc.), so why can't we finally be rid of respawns once and for all as well? I know there are probably many people who might disagree with me, and that's fine, but are there any others who feel as I do? Sorry for the long rant, but I felt I needed to voice my thoughts after seeing the 'abandoned' house I looted for the fifth time respawn once more after only a few hours, and I hope possibly something might come of this.

New vegas had respawns too, so does EVERY bethesda game as well.

Dont look at it as respawning look at it as new enemies moving in from other areas lol.

Do we know if there is respawning in areas which specifically say "CLEARED" on the map?

I understand your reasoning, but I personally don't have a problem with it as far as locations go. I do wish that spawn points throughout the world were dynamic and randomized, so you don't see the same things showing up predictably in the same exact place. Or at least that's how it was in Skyrim.

Did you play Far Cry 2? Now that was some annoying respawning! Couldn't go anywhere without a base being filled up again. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over...........

don't know, Skyrim had the same area status system as FO4 and enemies did respawn after a set period of time and the area "cleared" flag disappeared until you killed them again.

O helllll no. Respawing is one of the pluses in this game. I love going back to old areas with different builds, weapons, and approaches and clearing them out again. This game to me needs respawing. Keeps it fun and interesting.

No way! I don't want to end up in an empty map. That would be silly.

Sigh. I wouldn't want to end up with a completely empty map, but I was hoping the cleared areas would stay cleared.

put it this way, respawning enemies means respawning sources of weapons, caps and crafting materials. use it to your advantage.

I get what your saying, but this probably isn't the ideal game for a "completionist", as you refer to yourself. Personally, I like it. I find games that don't respawn get pretty boring. Wandering around in an empty world isn't that fun IMO

I'll take more respawning, thanks bby

I appreciate very much that life returns to cleared areas.

The "ASIS" mod for Skyrim did have randomized spawn locations as a feature (Customized GMST's), although it was kinda unstable. I hope we see a stable version for FO4 in future.
OP? You sure they spawned back after one day? Because as I remember from Skyrim it took at least a week or perhaps two weeks for "cleared" places to get reoccupied again.

i don't want an empty wasteland so respawns need to stay

As long as they stay cleared of enemies for a few days, maybe a week or two game time, that's OK for me. I would not want them to stay empty forever.

However some places that are cleared of enemies should be re-populated with benign individuals, not all, but some. Can't be only Raiders out there looking for new places to live and I am not going to build everyone a settlement.

yes they do respawn in "Cleared' Areas

I'm okay with respawns as long as they don't happen too quickly (not sure how long it takes in FO4, seems pretty quick). I'd also like if it was more diversified. You clean a raider camp, a month later a small group of supermutant moves in. Or a ghoul pack. Especially in the warzone where it can makes sense to have different group fighting for control. Bonus point if it can happens even if the area wasn't cleared (it would create fun encounters to see them fights, the winner keep the area) but that's another story/more complicated to do well.

I get what you're saying about being a completionist. You like to look at the map and see all the stuff you have done and completed. You can then check it of the list of things to do, until you have completed everything there is to do. There are some games where I like to complete everything, but Fallout and Skyrim aren't those games. If an area gets cleared then it is perfectly plausible that new tenants will move into those areas after some time has passed. It is unrealistic that the exact same people, in the same numbers would respawn. It would be better if the re-spawns were handled in a more random way. I don't like to fast travel in these games. For me these games are a living breathing environment that I inhabit and travel around in. It would not feel right at all, if the places that I had cleared did not repopulated at some point.

I stand in agreement with this in full.

I see where some of you are coming from, and actually I believe I would like to see that, if it respawned, that there was a possibility that it was filled up with 'friendlies' or some other random thing, or possibly a way to 'fortify' a location at a material/caps cost to the player that would prevent the location from respawning since you essentially have claimed the area as yours. That 'claiming' would either prevent the area from respawning and/or fill it with allies and any non-settlement area could have this applied. I think then everyone, those who hate and those who love respawns, would be satisfied.

Clear everything and then there's hardly anything remaining on the map because of limited re spawns? that's sounds fun.

I like the respawning. It lets my character go back and work on the skills as he/she turns the enemies into mince meat once again.

on the other hand, I helped clear out some raiders from a crashed plane, went home to store my junk, fast travelled back there to scrounge more and the whole place was crawling with supermutant suiciders.. jeez lol.

while respawning is generally a good thing in Bethesda games, FO4 could hold off a day or two

I suppose at its heart, that is the predicament, you have those that love respawns and those that hate it and it's hard to please everyone. I would be satisfied as long as they don't have radiant quests that depend on generic targets like in Skyrim and don't hard code respawns into the game. If I can mod respawn to not only no longer spawn containers but enemies as well, like in FO3, instead of enemy and loose items respawns being ingrained into the game like in Skyrim, then I will be happy.