This thread is so that we can keep all the discussion, rumors and speculation in one place.
This topic is for a friendly discussion of ideas and suggestions for Fallout 4.

We all have opinions about what the next game should have and should not have. Each of us has the right to express that opinion freely. There are points we agree on and points we do not agree on. This means that people are going to disagree with you on some things. Accept that and move on. No need to beat your point so far into the ground that no one wants to look at it any more.

At moderator discretion, threads about specific and distinct topics as they relate to FO4 and the rest of the Fallout series may be acceptable in the Fallout Series forum. 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.

Something to note. Discussions of Child Killing is not allowed on these boards. Don't even bring it up in this thread. It won't happen in any future game from Bethesda, so there is no reason to even discuss it. If you post about this subject, you may be Warned and or Banned from the boards for doing so.

This is also not a thread to discuss current or past Fallout Games, other than to mention an aspect of the game you want to see included, or not included, in a future Fallout game.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1499853-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-199/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1499347-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-198/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1498708-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-197/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1498248-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-196/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1496507-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-195/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1494933-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-194/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1492896-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-193/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1490066-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-192/#entry23383025
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1488233-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-191/#entry23341022
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1486923-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-190/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1485487-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-189/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1484659-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-188/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1483938-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-187/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1482975-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-186/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1482021-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-185/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1481257-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-184/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1480783-fallout-4-speculation-suggestions-and-ideas-183/

Well well here we are at thread 200... I don't know if I should feel proud or depressed. All in all it show's how much fans support Fallout and really truly love this franchise, regardless if you have problems with one of the games or not. Lets just hope by the end of the Summer we have some news on Fallout 4 (E3 please!), if not I think we are in for a 2016 release date which would truly kill the hype haha.

Much stronger skills and attributes to define the PC's capabilities and inabilities. If the character svcks at something, that should show.

Player initiated skill and item (sometimes in conjuction with skill levels) use on the world and objects. Kinda like the old point'n click adventures, and of course Fallout and Fallout 2. And no highlighting of opportunities, the game should trust the player to figure out where to try and what.

Much stronger and meaningful reactivity on bigger and smaller things. From character creation/progression to ways of quest resolutions to the narrative, and even some seemingly irrelevant and random actions. Choice and consequence and responsiviness.

Less focus on random flailing around, and more focus on making everything you can do have a point and purpose, and and reason to be ventured beyond simply "seeing what's behind the next hill".

Stronger and more reactive narrative that ties the world together and is affected by your doings (and not- doings). Where the "main quest" is not just a glorified sidequest completely detached from everything else.

In short, make the game more of a multilayered RPG (that the series used to be) than a nothing-matters open world sanbox with a boatload of mere disjointed busywork and halfhearted gameplay.

I really wonder what their motivation is to drag this out so long. Maybe they're indeed not certain yet what direction they want to go with Fallout 4 or have abandoned a particular route like they did with Fallout 3 (DC taking 3/4 of the map). Or perhaps they wait until the new consoles have established and thus having the opportunity to gain more experience with the new technology. Since they seem so eager to calm the masses I really fear that it will take another 2-3 years until we can finally enjoy Fallout 4

hard to say why, could be the new tech

I have forgotten the rumor is this will be shown at E3 and at the Microsoft presser 9:30 M pacific time on June 9th

we will see if that's a reality or not

*slow clap* we are at thread 200 and we are yet to get a yes or no about Fallout 4, at least there will be a few games this year to stop me from going mad thinking about FO4.

So I was playing Fallout 3 again and there are so many things I want to criticize all over with a fresh perspective but I'm in no mood so I'll go with something simple, something that you should be damn well able to do (or avoid doing) Bethesda.

I was by the Potomac riverbank leading to Rivet City and there is this little scavenger setup down south of Dukov's place, it's right underneath a bridge that runs overhead, the bridge Optimus Prime walks along during the final quest pre-BS. Anyway, what's my problem with this little scavenger setup? It's just a little scavenger setup right? Am I going to nitpick that the scavenger doesn't even try to find a house indoors or that he doesn't just live inside of the hollow part of the bridge on his/her side (which by the way is fully accessible)? Nope.

See my problem with this little scavenger setup is that literally 100 meters to the north of the scavenger home is a raider outpost.

Do I 'really' have to explain why this is mindnumbingly dumb design?

Bethesda, for future Fallout or TES games you need to place hostile and civilized people further apart from one another. It simply does not make any damn sense for a scavenger to be living a stonethrow away from a bunch of psychotic sadistic chem-addled raiders. There are no excuses for this design choice. This is bad world design when it comes to placement of hostile and/or neutral NPC's.

Instead, place civilization and hostile zones farther apart and fill in the middle with wildlife. That makes sense.

And a smaller nitpick of mine, why does locations with no sentient beings have electricity? We have subways that are infested with ferals (And on the note of ferals, I think you should retcon them out of the Fallout lore and bring back the good ol' Crazies) yet 200 year old lights are still running 24/7. Those bulbs should've burned out over a century ago. So if you're designing a location where intelligent people or mutants haven't been to in forever then the lights should be burned out. Hell it would add to the atmosphere to explore a pitch dark place with just your pip-boy to illuminate the way. And hell, if you didn't have ferals that give away their position and you instead had slower moving crazies that sneak up on you imagine how [censored] scary the metro tunnels in Fallout 3 would have been. Like you turn to the left and a crazie is right there taking a swing at you with a fireaxe. Now 'that' would be terrifying. Ferals aren't terrifying, they're cartoonish and spoil their element of surprise with their combat noise and feet tapping the floor.

Finally, do not do any more junktowns. Seriously, Megaton is Junktown with a bomb, Arefu is Junktown on a bridge, Republic Of Dave is Junktown with a fence. Metal shacks are overdone, especially 200 years after a nuclear disaster. Sure, poorer individuals could use scrap shacks to live in but it shouldn't be the default housing of all settlements. If you have to do poorer settlements how about you explore other ideas? What about a community living in a trainyard which uses the carts as housing? What about a community living at an actual airport and have disbanded the planes and reconstructed them into housing? What about a community living in a heavily forrested area actually living in freshly built wooden houses? Explore what other kind of communities you can build instead of just defaulting to Junktown-with-a-_____.

I'm all for retconning the zombie sprinters out of the canon. All ghouls were stiff as a board shamblers; then suddenly [as of FO3] said to regress into base animal mentality ~and somehow gained the habit of running three minute miles.

*As for the shacks and lights... [sadly] regarding them at all is over thinking it IMO.

Bethesda [it seems to me] has decorated the levels not for the expected pragmatic nature of NPCs from the past games, but for exposition (of a sort). The bugs on the caves with the generators... well if you really want to stretch it, I'd assume that's to imply that people explored the cave and got killed ~but their generators are still there... It's cleaner than filling the cave with sconced torches. (But my guess is that they simply did fill the cave with sconced torches ~that look like generators with attached lights.)

The modern Fallout games seem to be pushing the "theme" angle to the hilt, [I think] in the hopes of solidly instilling the (new) concept of the setting... lest anyone doubt that they understand the setting after an hour.

Heh, remember the idiot who "explained" that by saying that "they dont run like the wind in FO1 or 2 because it's a turned based game"? Apparently everything that we complain about Fallout 3 lore can be explain by the fact that it's real time.

Like the fact that Enclave troopers became bunch of patheric mooks, easily disposable trash. I miss the times when one Enclave or super mutant patrol was deadly no matter your level and equipment. Perhaps they didn't get the memo that they should scale to your level

Hey, anybody knows how it was with level scaling in Skyrim? Is it more or less dominant then in Fallout 3?

It's a funny thing about TB zombies... Pool of Radiance 2 was turn based, and had D&D zombies in them that shambled "realistically" [plausibly]...

But enough [IMO misguided] players complained that they had to wait for the zombies to 'crawl' across the screen during their turns... and sadly the developer caved on the complaint and patched the game with updated zombies that dashed from place to place like frightened cats.

So I really suspect that it's simply that the mass audience is not interested in any source material enough to accept logical behavior over convenience.
(And the rest of us have to live with their preferences affecting all that gets offered on the retail shelf. ) *As has happened in so many ways with the recent/ and future games of the Fallout Franchise.

It's a flaw in the realtime FPP design itself though... A slow shambling enemy ghoul could never close the distance before getting picked off by a hail of shots. The only way that works is en masse (with dozens or scores of closing enemies); not that great in Fallout IMO.

I suppose it comes from the dominance of firearms, and the insistence that accuracy and weaponhandling shouldn't be an issue with the character - they had slowish zombies in Oblivion. Feral ghouls should never have been even done in the first place. All they really count for is a flock of rabid baboons; and had they been that, a bunch of mutated insane monekeys escaped from a zoo or something, or something similiarly detached from the ghouldom, it wouldn't have been the issue it is now. I don't think I'd even had an issue seeing "an armored baboon" once or twice in the game (a nod towards Wasteland and it's armored bunnies).

I would love to explore areas that are pitch dark with a light. I don't like the idea of the pip-boy lighting your way, because I generally am against the pip-boy light. I would rather a helmet with a flashlight, or simply just a flashlight to illuminate your war. Perhaps even a torch would be neat.

Yeah I'm fine with the pip-boy light being an inferior alternative to a proper light source but yes, there should be flashlights, torches and even spelunky helmets as alternatives who's fuel/battery can run out. (Whereas the pip-boy light doesn't run out but it gives a rather poor lightning merely allowing you to guide your way out if said proper equipment goes out in the middle of a dungeon.

We did have about 30 or 40 threads get used up real fast during the speculation on the count down website hoax that went up last year. So, its really more like thread #170

Ghouls speed wasn't related to turn-based

Almost 80% of the ghouls you met were complaining about the pain of their muscles, their bones, some missing organs or organs they were about to lose.

It wasn't just about their skin. Their whole body was in an awfull shape.

Some of them were able to run, but they were the luckiest.

But the thing is, if you want to make them as ennemies, you have three solutions :

- Mindless beast, that run and attack in thousands.

- Sane ghouls with an hostile agenda, that may not be able to run, but could snipe you from afar, with great crits, and high luck & perception.

- Sane or dumb ghouls, weaker than normies, but living in irradiated areas, which means that you keep suffering from the environnement, while they heal themselves thanks to the radiation. You have to put them down quicker, or the environnement will kill you. (or sneak past them to spare lifetime)

Personnally, i find the third solution not only more challenging, but more consistent with the established strenghts & weakness of the ghouls.

I know that this can add to the game, and underground places that have no lights are dark (I have spelunked, there is nothing darker than a cave when you don't have a flash light). However, from a game standpoint, I like to be able to see my surroundings when I am playing. So, to me, most areas should be navigable with the in game lighting effects, but some areas may need alternative character lighting.

Besides, on a properly calibrated monitor, things are pretty dark underground, maybe not dark enough for some. However the mods that I have used that are supposed to make interiors more "naturally" darker just make it so I can't see the hand in front of my face. So, I am forced to use a light/night vision of some kind which kinds of defeats the purpose of having a dark interior if all someone is going to do is light it up anyway.

Something so Epic, it needs 200 threads to discuss!

But for Fallout 4, Definitely needs a more in-depth drug-running questline, where the player eventually becomes the top dog of the Fallout underworld.