So who am I and why should you care? Just a gamer, like you, who generally loves Bethesda games enough to browse and post on the forums. As for why you should care, well that's up to whether you agree with my opinion.

I'm here, which is extremely rare, to tell Bethesda that I don't feel the magic with Fallout 4. I have played the open world master strokes of this development team since I was a pre-teen. I love the games that this studio produces. I sink literally hundreds of hours into them, probably like the die hard fans who run around in here discussing the game regularly. So I found it exceedingly strange that I just don't really care to keep playing Fallout 4. The game is beautiful, the animation is the best of any of their open world titles so far, and the soundtrack is spot on. But... it is missing so much to make it amazing. It breaks my heart, and I want so much to love it like I did Fallout 3, NV, or any of the incredible Elder Scrolls titles (which are my favorite).

So I started to wonder why I got bored with Fallout 4 and why it became a slog to force myself to play. I thought about it for a few days, and while I have a few major disappointments, the biggest is probably the crafting system. I'm sure there are PLENTY of readers who swear by it, love it, and will love to drag me around town because of it. That's not to say I wouldn't love a different system or approach to crafting in future games, I just find this system to be a chore.

Why? Well, somewhere on the internet, I read an article refer to Fallout 4 as "Bethesda's garbage collection simulator" and laughed myself silly, then sighed. Because it was true. I found looking for rare crafting components and scrounging around for screws to be fun for a little while. Every corner harbored the thrill of the hunt. Then as time went on I got more and more jaded with CONSTANT encumbrance. I found that this started a domino effect because at a certain point the modding system for weapons and armor also started to become a chore with not nearly enough options to satisfy the agitation that came with looting everything all the time. The more I thought about it I also realized how silly it is to create high tech gadgets from a pile of garbage. Sure you get perks to explain away how you can do this because you're so damn smart, but that just continued with the fall of the dominoes.

You have access to almost everything in the game by just leveling up. This bothers me. Why is it that I just somehow know how to build super tech because I'm smart? I know lots of intelligent people, but I don't think an untrained anyone could build a sniper rifle mod just because they're smart. Okay, I can understand being able to use Power Armor because of who the main character is, but here is the point of this particular criticism: I wish the game had more depth in its approach to these skills and abilities, more RPG in this very shooter-fied Fallout entry. I wish these perks were acquired through playing specific quests to teach your character these proficiencies.

Then I also find objection to the method of crafting itself. I personally would find it more rewarding to seek out and loot the modifications we are using in the game as rare and special loot, then apply them, rather than create them from scratch. Or if you really like crafting, be required to repair some of them if they were not well preserved. But I'd rather see weapon mod crafting completely done away with and return to seeking out how to find these rare mods, because I love the mod system, and then learning how to plug them in to your weapons. I do like the freedom in creating your own homes and settlements, however. My primary disappointment with this system is the constant nagging. Not much else to say there, it is pretty nice and I look forward to DLC adding more content if I find my way back to the game in the future.

My last thing to say here, really, is the let down of the factions. Not only are they distasteful (okay the Minutemen are cool, but one hell of a slog and boring), the story really, really drags. I was really caught off guard by the Institute twist in the story mostly because it was so. damn. easy. to see coming right from the get go of the game simply because you know time is an easy and predictable manipulative factor in story telling. It's extremely difficult to pull one off if your audience has watched any good sci-fi time travel flicks. I also thought that the final battle was anti-climactic, and it didn't really feel like a finale to me as it has in past games. Fallout 3 had you following Prime through an Enclave army, it was epic as hell. Oblivion had you fighting through the city full of demons to a final conflict with Akatosh and Dagon. Skyrim had you facing off in the freaking afterlife with a dragon god. Fallout 4 ended with a whimper of a story. To me at least.

Anyway, thanks for reading. This is really just out there in the hopes that someone from Bethesda might see it and take note. I love these games dearly and Skyrim dethroned Oblivion as my single favorite title of all time some time ago. I'm going to stare longingly at my bottle of Nuka Cola Quantum from Target now and lament my emotions for Fallout 4.

i really enjoy the game - my criticism besides the bugs would be that the rpg mechanics are VERY toned down (really borderline now) and that it doesnt have any replay value

I put around....80ish hours in, over 2 characters, not alot in a Bethesda game, and the least I have put into their games to date.

Put the game down a few weeks ago and every time I go to load it up Im like, "why bother?"

I am one who wasn't thrilled with their take on the series, or their recent take on RPGs...will certainly be the last game I preorder from them, its not that its utterly broken or svcks, well, the writing and dialog DO svck, its just a profound disappointment for me.

Ah well back to TW3, still haven't beaten that either.

All this and you don't mind the simplified dialogues?

I honestly don't think it's meant to be replayed. As with other BGS' games, you can do almost everything in a single playthrough - there's very little mutually exclusive content.

Everybody has his/her preferences and borders of tolerance. I for example don't like crafting at all and hated the boring and tedious Skyrim way to do it. Nevertheless I enjoyed Skyrim and even still play it from time to time (in the form of Requiem mod). The easy FO4 way of crafting was a relief to me. I think you can ignore the FO4 crafting however and still play the game. You find or can buy most of the mods you also can craft and can install it on your weapon. Or you restrict yourself to what weapon you find which would add a challenge to the game.

I like that three of the four FO4 factions are partly distasteful (as it is in real life with most groups), gives me the possibility to destroy all without too bad a feeling.

A big plus for me of FO4 is the settlement building, as tedious as it sometimes is. I was very surprised that I liked it after I got involved a bit deeper more by coincidence than intent later in the game. First, after doing the initially Sanctuary quest, I had sworn never to build a settlement again.

I really think most people overvalue junk in this game :/

looking at some playthroughs and seeing people collect everything and see them getting overencumbered every few minutes, makes you want to scream at the monitor

you really don't need the heavy junk, such as desk fans, lamps... it's completely enough to take the light stuff, such as fuses, lightbulbs, duct tape

I think microsopes are the only really useful junk, that weighs above 1 :/ I wouldn't take anything heavier than a surgical tray with me ^^

If you try not to get addicted by junk and only take the good stuff with you, you will be able to travel for several rl hours, without having to go back to your settlement

and still have 1000+ of almost every type of junk, except for maybe oil

perks like 'the lone wanderer' or the 'scrounger' are obviously very helpful for this as well ^^

with 'scrounger' rank 2 you can completely forget about most of the junk and just take the <10lbs laser rifles with you home, which will already be enough to get tons of screws, alu, fiberglass a.s.o.

I think Bethesda created a great way to show us, why there is still so much left in the buildings...

it's just not possible to carry out everything out of there, especially if you're not the lone wanderer, who can carry 300+ lbs

It really makes you think, what you need and what you don't need and the 'take it all' approach will make the game feel like work :/

I only pick up junk weighing around a pound, but don't do a lot of modding or building. I don't pick up armors, and no weapons under a value of 150.
I can see if the crafting and building was something you really liked going in, but it wore on you, how this game may not have staying power for you.
Glad I'm not of that mindset, though.

I actually do dislike the dialogue system, but honestly I don't like to harp on and on and on. I liked Fallout 4, but it doesn't meet my expectations for xyz reasons and I fell out of interest with it. And that bothered me.

But yes, the dialogue system suffers from a lack of distinct "RPG" feels I have come to expect from Bethesda games. Even the mod to extend it isn't enough for me, but it helped.

On my phone so there could be typos.

I agree that Skyrim's crafting was awful. The process was tedious, boring, and could do with a major overhaul in the coming iterations. That is one of the few things I disliked about Skyrim. I think that the Fallout 4 crafting system had promise, for me anyway, but its too far overboard to enjoy after a while. I feel that I would have enjoyed finding the mods in old bases and vaults than crafting them.

I think a system like this would make more "sense" in a setting where limited materials would be needed to craft. Less looting would make this process far more painless.

Can't I just build a junk zapper, let it teleport home all the **** and call it a day? That'd be nice too.

After 40 hours of being constantly over encumbered it got to me too. Specially since I don't fast travel it got annoying.
So I installed a mod that make the junk weightless.
I roleplay it as the minutemen are the ones who do the actual scavenging not me (you can even send up a flare for them to actually come, but you can only "dismiss" them with console commands since they tend to follow you around until they die).
Although even that amount of mind flexing isn't necessary. Making the junk weightless greatly increased my enjoyment with the game.
The Witcher 3 also made the crafting material weightless. Maybe not immersive much but hey... How is creating a jet pack out of tin cans immersive anyway...