While I am blaming bethesda for some of the awful looking models we have for building, is it really their fault or the earlier vision of the originals and any other post apocalypse type game?

I look at Diamond City, the jewel of the comonwealth, and see the same rickety structures were givien to build. But why? Does the leader of the city really have an office that is covered in broken glass? No one thinks to use board or lost the knowledge of glass making? We are able to make a pipe weapon yet are clueless to put 2 boards together evenly?

This is Boston, no way these people live like this in the winter..Yet this is the art vision that some games have to make it look run down, war torn. But why? Did no one think carpentry/glassmaking or building was a valid skill in the wastleland or were they all shot?

I can craft a bed but it has to look like mildewed stained mattresses? I can craft an automated defense turret yet I cant build a wall that doesnt have holes in it?

I am not asking to make a moderm home but I think there are a ton of ways to make things looked patched yet usefull. Boarded up windows if glass is too hard. Patched quilt clothes over beds to make them at least more presentable. Quilting can even be used for cheap insulation. This doesnt take a crafting degree to do. I wish I had a few names of games that do this right but none come to mind at the moment but have seen it done in others. It's like the vision that always getting used assumes every craftsman has been killed and were stuck in a society of idiocracy.

I have looted a million brooms yet seems they are never used in the future. I know its probably too late for this game but please think of this for future dlcs or games. Its funny but have a mr handy trimming shrubs on pre war commercial yet cant get him to cut 1 scrub in future.

Well why not a wall that actually looks like a wall? If you're so good at making weapons and armor and furniture and generators and lights and everything else, why does your building always look like something a kindergartener made?

Frankly, I gave up building the building. I just moved in to one of the houses in Sanctuary and left it at that.

I agree with the ground debris argument, which has been an issue since FO3 (I think 1 & 2 where pretty well done from what I recall). However, with the construction, I think it is the way it is because you are using scrap/recycled materials. Your walls are made from bits of pre-war tin, wood boards and logs you've reclaimed. You aren't smelting and milling anything to create a refined product. Same principle with the turret, it's bits and pieces that you have repurposed. It isn't necessarily that this technology is lost to the era, but that no one has the means or facility required to do it. What you want is a processed product, which is a whole different bag of bones than construction.

And for the trash bit, I reconcile it by figuring that these people are surviving... not living. They don't care about the mess because that's the only quality of life they have ever known. What does it matter about litter if you are struggling every day for food or to survive the next attack. We are comparing it to our standard of life that we enjoy today. That's how I role-play it anyway.

Well according the wiki concerning the Great War the entire planet was left in a permanent summer like season year round so if that is true then Boston does not have to deal with the harsh winter conditions they can see IRL. If you look at the in game date it is late November and while it doesn't get really cold normally this time of year it certainly doesn't look to be mid to low 40's F. Another thing that makes me doubt the wiki is in both Boston and DC the sea level hasn't changed in 200 years like it should have if it really is summer like year round follow a total nuclear war. Not trying to make any excuses here but if it doesn't get cold that might be why our buildings look shabby.

While to a degree, I could work with this, the artwork should also reflect this. You can make a wall looked patched with spare parts, go knows I looted a ton of duct tape in the game so there is a way to make a wall still solid and looked like used several different components from different things. & days to die did this somewhat when upgrading your buildings to make a metal look that was patched together.

And yes, people are no longer living but surviving, so they hunker down in a shack that wont even keep out rain? few nails and some scraps and every hole could be boarded, covered. People live in the wastleland with mutants and raiders, they need a structure that looks sturdy not that blows apart at first gust of wind, Thats how they surivive. Survival breeds hardiness, not sloth. Unless your constantly on the run, you dont want to live in some beaten up shack.

Sorry my quote system half the time never works for this site but that was for Pale_Ryder

It's their fault. Look at the buildings in Vault City or NCR in Fallout 2 for instance.

I never thought of this, I like this post lol, the wastelanders can make laser turrets and machinegun turrets all sorts of weapons and ammo but cant clean up a pile of trash or fix a window?

I would like to see the option to do this in the settlement creation menu

I agree with you on principle, but consider the many modern day examples. A quick google image search will show you that there is a large majority of the world living EXACTLY like the people in Fallout... even a modern city where no doubt you walk past countless piles of trash every day and don't bat an eye, much less stop and clean it up.

And as far as inside there house, yea... you and I abhor the thought of living in squalor.... but there are some people who simply see a house as a place that holds your stuff and a place to sleep.

You ever been in a house that has a big screen tv, but a living room that looks like a parade ground? Lol, I have, and it's just as gross as what we see in game.

Semantics aside, I agree and would like to see some more aesthetically pleasing options available... maybe unlocks with intelligence or local leader perk?

I never thought about this. There is certainly some inconsistencies between the defenses you have at your disposal and the materials you have to build with.

If anything our machine gun turrets should look http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/bioshock/images/a/a5/ME0000839724_2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110821213459

EDIT: I do think the machine gun turrets we have are perfectly reasonable for the game. It's quite obvious that they've been salvaged from the military. Especially since most of the parts required to the build them come from scrapping turrets themselves.

It seems no one survived that knows how to produce glass for windows, drywall, plumbing, etc. I think of it as most of the survivors never touched a tool so they had to learn to put scrap together to make shelter....and like the saying goes "if it ain't broke then don't fix it"

As for our crafting, I think some of the things can be said that we create but others seem more like we found them (which are still in the crafting menu to keep things simple).

To overanolyze this would just create more questions and more things to nitpick

I built and modified a set of power armor even upgraded it to have a jet pack.

I built a laser weapon so powerful it can match the atom bomb in strength

But give me a wall to build or a bed and i have no bloody clue how to make one.......

People fail to understand what this guy is saying.

2-4 BILLION people live in places straight out of fallout. I know, I have seen them in the Caribbean.

Look at Jamaica. There were people living in 1/2 finished houses. These people were not poor by comparison to others. (They cant get loans so the live in the house as they build it)

While they may not have laser turrets, they have cell phones M-4's knock off nike clothes, and giant ass resorts where us rich Americans come to eat and drink like kings for a week.

Look at the trash piles in India, they put Fallout to shame.

Sure there is squalor in todays world, and yeah ramshackle housing, but I bet if they had rad roaches visiting them, would be sealed up real good.

But this is due to economic conditions. With a fully functioning economy (like Vault City or NCR in Fallout 2, for instance) it makes no sense that centuries later functioning societies remain this stunted. And it REALLY makes no sense that societies 46 years after the events of Fallout 2 have moved backwards.