» Sun Jan 17, 2016 8:06 pm
Why not? What if the player character is "General" or other related leader which carries authority in the settlement; why wouldn't the player character decide matters like job assignment, settlement planning or provision network structures?
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Are we still talking about role-playing, here?
Role playing is all about "You are in this situation; what do you do?" It doesn't matter if the medium is dungeon-mastered pen and paper or first-person virtual-reality, role-play revolves around player choice and self-direction set in the perspective of the player character.
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And, as for the rest, there are already have two settlements attached to settlers with backstories of significant depth. So much of what you're suggesting is already in place - but accompanied by the sorts of things role-players would expect from a role-playing game of this level.
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- Covenant has a quite a deep backstory presented as a mystery - albeit, with some very dubious "karma" mechanics but, hey! What two people on earth will ever totally agree on things like this?
- Sanctuary, care of the Longs, also has a marvellously well-thought out collection of back-stories. Again, it's a mystery because of a very real veteran/PTS attitude that people who weren't there wouldn't understand and would only make things worse if informed of the key events.
This background is a complete match to the violent, proto-feudal world of Fallout and not supposed to be spoon-fed. One has to get off the beaten track and start thinking for oneself and making ones own decisions because that's the only way to present an in-game mystery and quite frankly, thinking for oneself is the whole point of role-play - which is why I think it so appropriate, when the option to gain rank is presented, for the player to acquire authority commensurate with that rank (not just rank in name only).
On this issue of backstories, another poster was expressing frustration because settlers are too friendly!! I would have agreed with this if we were talking about a local population exceeding 2 million but smaller communities tend to be "friendlier" and overtly "polite" so it makes sense that most settlers in these tiny settlements want to swap "small talk" with the player character every time they pass on by. At the other extreme, I think it makes tremendous sense that most NPCs do not want to share their life story (i.e. backstory) with the player character and the few that do are only willing to do so because they have gotten to know the player character well enough to want to be friends (i.e. "followers"). And, in role playing games, that's where backstories really fit; with party/squad members or companion/follower NPCs, not with meagre associates who happen to share some of the same spaces that the player character occasionally passes through.
On this point, I really have to ask, why wouldn't there be places where the player character will always be a stranger; an outsider?
And, why shouldn't there be 20-30 or better still 170-180 odd workshops that a player (wanting more strategy and less spoon-feeding) can choose to activate as generic settlements?
My point is that you really do have 2-3 core settlements with settler backstories. Maybe it's a bit much having another 7-8 settlements dumped on you by Preston but the other 20 are optional. If you choose to send settlers to those, that's got nothing to do with good or bad game design - that's all on you if it's not what you want.
Regarding the proposed Sanctuary/RedRocket amalgamation, that would remove a very nice strategic opportunity with respect to the effect of insufficient width of passage between fire zones on hostile traffic. This said,
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To put this in perspective, I'd reiterate something I've already mentioned and that is my preference for the use of proper person's names instead of just "Settler". I would like to see all settlers labelled with a mostly unique, randomly generated person's name (not a class), just to get things started on a more believable footing (I think the concept of introductions before names-becoming-visible can easily wait for the next version of Fallout, while getting individual naming off the ground in an update is simple enough and requires little enough effort to be eminently doable). For those of us who have difficulty remembering what job each name is assigned to, that's one of the side advantages of different professions favouring specific clothing. Hand out the right clobber for the assignment, and then things start to make more sense, visually.
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