Fallout 3 and Fallout:NV’s first DLCs Operation Anchorage and Dead Money respectively were arguably the weakest. The first DLC has typically been rushed and the content somewhat lacking. I suggest for the first DLC, which I’m sure is already well underway, that whatever off map mini-expansion type DLC they are currently working on extend development and release it as the second DLC.


The first DLC should be an on map content add-on focused on improving several things already in the game. For a bit of fun it would be cool if they added a previously “hidden” and haunted vault – could be a fun way to add a small quest to what I consider a practical update.


Priorities for improvements:

1. Addition of Traits – One of my favorite add ons to Fallout: NV was traits. Love traits!

2. Rework lackluster perks – I’m looking at you Lead Belly (if it was just one rank I’d be fine with it).

3. Add more crafting options for unarmed/melee (weight decrease, increased range, more dual attack types, add poison, etc) and just add more unarmed weapons in general.

4. Rework the Syringer – This weapon was an enormous missed opportunity. The main problem is you can only craft ammo one at a time. Needs to be crafted in batches of 5-10. Also some of the effects need to be reworked to be actually useful.

5. Add a Greenhouse as a construable building for settlements. Greenhouse would slowly grow things like bloodleaf, hubflower etc.

6. Greatly flesh out settlement building/crafting. There have been lots of features already heavily discussed that are sorely missing. Examples are naming of settlers, automatic settler assignments, better construction options, birds eye view… any number of things, that’s just a few I am throwing out there.

7. Rework dialog speech checks or at the very least improve the dialog wheel.

8. Improve the inventory management system. Keyring is top on the list. I also think it would be handy to craft pieces of armor together at workbench (could be swapped out later) and saved in your inventory as a single suit, so you basically craft an outfit.

9. Add an option for left hand/right hand view toggle, with appropriate animation changes made to bolt cycling. I actually don’t think it would be all that hard to implement this. Myself and other real life gun nuts find it somewhat head splitting that all the guns in the game are left handed. It is low priority but I would like to see it changed.

10. Add ambient crowd noise to well populated settlements as well as established citifies.


It doesn’t even have to be these exact changes, although from what I’ve gleaned from the forums this is a lot of what needs to be reworked/added/fixed, I’m just saying I would MUCH RATHER have an improvement DLC first rather than a rushed/lackluster off map adventure. Again, I found both operation anchorage and Dead Money to be a bit disappointing. I hope Bethesda takes a new approach and improves the game now and take their time on whatever adventure DLCs come out.

Very gracious of you, OP,

though I suspect that requiring Bethesda to rethink their first FO4 DLC is somewhat premature.

And all of these changes should be for a free patch that might show up at the same time as the first DLC is released. DLC should always be going to a new place where new items, enemies, and missions are available. If Bethesda starts charging money for patches, then that will be the day when I stop playing any Bethesda game.

Dead Money was easily the best DLC for me. I know it had the players somewhat torn down the middle of those who liked it and not, but calling it the weakest must be your personal opinion. /rant off

I liked Operation Anchorage..

I also really liked Dead Money...especially after I found out how to make off with ALL the gold bars..

edit: Also what starkaos said...most of that should be part of updates, not DLCs...

Yup, it was one of the best add-ons for any game i've ever played.

Though i do fully understand why many would hate it. For me it was blast from the eighties, back to NES-difficulty
Well, reminded me of it. It wasn't nearly that tough and unforgiving

On topic, wouldn't say no to any of those.

I liked Dead Money. In fact, I preferred it over the actual game.

Wow, calling Dead Money the weakest of the New Vegas DLC?


Sentiment I have seen from most here in the forum is that it is regarded as the strongest, and I agree. Dead Money was a great heist DLC and had a stronger plot than any of the other 3 New Vegas DLC.

I hated Dead Money at first but I now I really like it. NV weakest DLC is Honest Heart and Fallout 3 weakest DLC is Mothership Zeta.

Dead Money, The Pitt, and Point Lookout have a certain atmosphere that not everyone likes. My favorite DLCs are Mothership Zeta and Old World Blues because they match my tastes not because of how strong of a DLC they are. Although, my favorite Fallout DLC has to be Old World Blues and my favorite Elder Scrolls DLC has to be Shivering Isles. Which just shows that I love gleeful insanity. Which would explain why I love Saint's Row 3 and 4 over GTA.

I wouldn't bet on these, especially #1. Mostly because I can't see them making semi-major changes that would require people to create new characters..... yes, we "big fans" here, play multiple times and make lots of characters - but a lot of the playerbase likely doesn't. That's part of why the DLC are either post-finish (Broken Steel), or independent of the main game (all the rest).

I enjoyed Dead Money quite a bit, myself, but it was in the middle of the pack. My two top picks would be Lonesome Road as first and Old World Blues as second (homicidal toaster, what is not to love).

{Edit}

As for traits, I never could get into them. Most of them seemed to have negatives greater than the benefits.

Trait: Super-Magical Melee Powerup.

Increases your Strength for Melee calculations only to give you triple damage but makes you clumsy resulting in a 40% chance to drop your weapon with each swing.

Errrrrr, No thanks, just give me Wild Wasteland and I will go with that.

If BGS adds traits I won't complain, but I probably won't use them.

I'd say most of this should be in patches not a DLC...

All of these can be mods, the green house is already a mod. Why are you trying to get Bethesda to not make a good DLC in exchange for something the modding community can do easily... We need the geck though. For bigger mods that is.

Because "good" is subjective and not everyone is going to have all of these mods that supposedly take care of everything you personally don't like in a DLC.

I think ambient sound should be added as an update to the game.

I've seen visual that very much need sound effects, but it's not there. Example: Water falling off to another surface of water

I agree with what starkaos, Vegna, & Tharozoft said. These changes would fall under Mods and/or Patches.


In my opinion for single player games:


DLC - New content/features and anything required to make them work.

Patches - Official Fixes/Updates to existing content.

Mods - Where preference changes should be made, especially if they are changes only a portion of the audience would want. (and it should go without saying but unofficial patches & unofficial content)

I hate Dead Money because I hate "Uhhhhhh..... we're gimping your character because shut up we want to play this way for this portion of the story" as a story element.

Looking at you Assassin's Creed 1.

You do understand, that making something part of a DLC means it is not available unless you purchase the DLC.

As an example:

1. Addition of Traits – One of my favorite add ons to Fallout: NV was traits. Love traits!

and

2. Rework lackluster perks – I’m looking at you Lead Belly (if it was just one rank I’d be fine with it).

1 and 2 are entirely different animals.

We will start with 2. Rework.

This is a request to modify the functionality of something already in game as part of the base game. The only reason BGS would rework a perk is if that perk was not performing as specified or BGS came to believe that the specification was wrong. Either way, it would be classified as a bug which means it would be patched and NOT be part of a DLC. Telling people that they are going to have to make an additional purchase for a bug fix is real bad juju.

Anywhere you have used words like "rework" or "improve" as part a request for a feature of a DLC. If it is done at all, most likely it will not be a part of a DLC but will be patched.

1. Traits

This is a request to add an entirely new feature that currently does not exist in game. This makes it a candidate to be part of a DLC. Having said that, sometimes small new features are patched and passed out to the users free. It really depends on if BGS wants it as part of the base game or if they want to tie it to the purchase of the "Adventures of Charlie on the MTA" DLC.

Something about the crafting/building requests. This may come as a surprise to some, but not everybody likes crafting and building. I wouldn't mind seeing some of the things you mentioned but there are others that absolutely despise the idea. If BGS were to implement these suggestions and others, they have a couple of ways to do it. The could create a giant "Crafting" DLC. This would have the effect of turning these forums into a free fire zone with some people going ballistic over a DLC that did not offer them new content and others defending is as new content. The other way they could do it is to dribble it out piecemeal over the space of a year (or whatever). We would still have the forum wars but it wouldn't be quite as dramatic. People moaning for their stained glass windows building item and others saying "thank God BGS isn't wasting a lot of time on this type of crap"

Your number 9 may be easy. It may not be. I for one refuse to give a definitive answer to that before I get a chance to look at all the source code and resources that need to be changed. Since I am not, never have been, nor am likely to ever be a BGS employee, I doubt they will give me access anytime in the near future.

Actually, I don't even remember what specific suggestions were made in the original post. I'm just kind of tired of the "mods will take care of your crappy ideas, so Bethesda should only implement mine " type of arguments. While I would certainly love to have new *official* content for settlements, companions, quests, new items, etc. that is provided to us all for free, I am skeptical that it will happen outside of a paid expansion or DLC, so yes, we would need to pay for it in order to have all of those new features. However, my idea of "good" content may not be the same as someone else's "good" content.

Obviously, if something needs to be patched or a bug fixed, then yes, that should be an official patch and not a DLC.

They just need to make DLC the same way they did for Skyrim. Dawnguard was terrific. Seems like a bit of a stretch to find a "first DLCs always svck" pattern when your examples are only two DLCs made by separate studios, that plenty of people enjoyed.

And yeah, most of those things belong either in free patches or rolled into paid DLC, like how Skyrim added mounted combat and projectile kill-cams for free or rolled in lycanthropy improvements and arrow crafting into Dawnguard.

Dead Money was the best Fallout DLC for me too, it brought something completely different and loved the atmosphere.

Word of advice: while yellow font is fine for the desktop version of the site, it is literally impossible to read on the mobile version, as the background for the mobile site is white.

I don't know what you're talking about OP, Dead Money was solid and good. All of fallout 3's dlc were equally as weak as Anchorage though, most of FO3's dlc doesn't even last 3 hours.

Ahh, ok. Didn't think of that. I'll have that in mind.