How did Bethesda ever think this was a good idea? How? I just don't get it.

If you listened to Todd Howard at all before Fallout 4's release, he said that they didn't want companions to be able to die because the player would just keep reloading their game to back when they were alive. Todd said that they, Bethesda, did not want players to think they need to reload the game for any reason. That it broke up the gameplay and was something they did not want in their game.

Yet that's all everyone does in conversations now. See some yellow, orange, or red? F5. Fail? F9.. and repeat. Every single streamer on Twitch and YouTube does this. So what the hell did Bethesda accomplish?

It's almost as if they don't even bother playing their games before releasing them. They just come up with the most random of ideas and put them in, regardless of how bad those ideas are. It's insane.

It's a single player game. Let people play the game they want. Who cares what other people want. If you don't like it, don't do it. Simple. What is next fast travel shouldn't be in the game?

You're not understanding.

Bethesda made companions immortal supposedly because they don't want people to keep reloading their games when their companions die. That was their excuse this time around.

.. yet they introduced a mechanic to conversations that makes people want to reload their games to keep trying.

So why did they even bother making companions immortal if they apparently don't care whether people reload or not?

wow thanks for a completely useless post.

companions & conversations are 2 different things IMHO if my companion dies I have just lost 50 % of my firepower & a sizable amount of loot I can haul so that's a must for an immediate reload if I fail a conversation attempt I just move on no big deal

There's a distinction that needs to be made here. Yes, there is RNG, to an extent. That is, IF your charisma is on the borderline. However, if you have more than enough charisma (you can boost it with clothing or drugs), you will always succeed the skill check. Now, I think the OP would have greater validity if the entire system was arbitrary and random, but it is not. The only players who are haphazardly getting an "RNG" effect are those who have some charisma, but probably not enough, leading to a scenario where sometimes they complete the check and sometimes they don't. Honestly though, pacing of combat and pacing of dialogue or two separate issues. The fact that people care so much to pass the dialogue checks, in my opinion, is a good thing. It means they are invested in what is being displayed and they want a certain outcome. Now, as I stated there are more effective ways of achieving persuasion checks, but this is one of the means that people are using.

How is this any different in any of the other Fallouts? Every single Fallout game had RNG in their conversations and had lots of people saving and reloading those conversations. The only difference is that Fallout 4 is color-coded.

what's the problem with reying different options and outcomes, and if you don't like it, you can try again and do things differently, that's the main characteristic of rpg's, i think it was a great idea to make companions essential, unkillable, and the yellow , orange and red dialog options, i find them very helpfula dn i don't want to reload the game everytime the companion dies, is rustrating, the companion is there to accompany you, to help, if he dies, what's the point?

You guys clearly aren't understanding what I'm saying.

1. Bethesda said they do not want us to keep reloading our games. That is why companions are immortal. Todd Howard himself said that.

2. Bethesda added RNG to conversations that is causing people to keep reloading their games.

1 =/= 2. If Bethesda was so concerned about people reloading their games, why did they add a mechanic that encourages people to do just that?

It has nothing to do with how players play Fallout 4. I don't care how they play it. I'm not trying to force anything on anyone. I'm asking why Bethesda said they didn't want something.. and then did it anyway.

You don't have to reload your game. That's them being greedy. If you abuse it, then abuse it. If not, get over it and live with the failed attempt.

The same can be said of dead companions.

It was obvious from the start that people were going to save and reload in order to pass speech checks because they're RNG now. I'm asking why Bethesda didn't catch that and do something to prevent it, just as they did with companions OR allow companions to die knowing people were just going to reload anyway.

They drew a line in the sand.. and then wiped it away. I don't get it. "This is our law, we will not break it. Oops, we broke it." Why even adopt that mentality if you're going to ignore it in every other circumstance?

Bethesda may have realized that making companions unkillable helps the game feel a bit more like a pencil-and-paper RPG.

We must remember this is a Bethesda sandbox game.

When Todd gave that rationale for the invincible companions, my first thought is that they can't do that so it can't be the real reason. Aside from reloading for persuasion checks, you have reloading for lockpicking, reloading for hacking, trigger a trap? reload and disarm it now you know it's there, reloading for better weather when RNG dumps rads on you for basically nothing, reloading because you accidentally stole something and turned a town hostile, reloading because you realized you just wasted half your wood by accident in build mode, reloading when you kill a legendary enemy and get a really bad rare item reward, reloading because you're just not happy with the way a particular quest or conversation went...

If you removed reloading from a Bethesda sandbox it would be almost unrecognisable; so I see your point OP, why remove one source of potential reloading if players are still reloading 20-30 times an hour for other things? I suppose any of those things could be better argued seperately, but when you look at it in this way it does look almost crazy for Todd to have claimed that.

Fallout 5 will be checkpoints only .

This guy gets it.

So failing a speech check is the same as your companion dying? If people want to abuse a single player game to get the desired outcome they want, then it is their own prerogative. However, losing a companion can be emotional for some people and immortal companions helps deal with most of those players.

Because that's how actual conversations work IRL. The real world doesn't work on flat [60/100 = 100% fail] checks, its effectively random due to the inclusion of others, and your inability to control how they think.

Even the best silver tongued devil can fail to convince someone, and even people who never lie can pull off a good one sometimes.

The real question is, why the hell do they still think its a good idea to block off access to advanced, expert, and master terminals/locks behind perks. There no magic force field preventing you from trying to pick/hack said locks/terminals. Especially when TES doesn't use such idiocy.

It's same with stealing. You can save/load until you successfully steal desired item.

I would suggest to Bethesda use different mechanic, something like "when player enters location, pre-load all speech checks and steal attempts in that location based on character skills ".

So, when player will try to communicate or steal something, it will always end the same way, no matter how many times they try to load.

In case that player will level-up in area (and add point to charisma) and/or use drugs or perks for boosting charisma, it will reload these checks again.

It will still be exploitable, but it would be much more complicated.

Or, at least - remove possibility to save/load in dialogues.

people are listening, you just do not see the answer in the same way the rest do

more people reload the game PURELEY because of companion death then on conversation. IF my companion dies, I just lost something HUGE, where as a conversation might mean something to the story for teh quest, but generally not much, with some exceptions. If i fail to extort more money from someone because of a failed skill check, most are not going to reload.

also, Think of it this way, before, people were reloading because of companion death and conversations, now they only do so when they fail a conversation they really wanted to succeed, which means bethesda has succeeded, people are reloading.

also, companions can die in a beth game over stupid reasons, like running into a trap repeatedly, or falling off an edge, or getting into a fight that came out of nowhere, a charisma conversation check is at least partially based on player descision (not only making the choice to choose the option, but also if they put cha up or not)

I think they meant they accept that players will reload when companions die almost 100% of the time anyway, and Beth doesn't want us having to bother going through that - not that they don't want us to save and reload after general failure. After all, 'Save early, save often' is practically a Fallout law.

Well, wasn't RNG in RPG conversations since the dawn of time? That's the "quirk" of RPG and all the pros and cons of having stats, not something Bethesda decided to do or are only ones doing it.

You must hate playing games with D&D/P&P system with a passion

There's a fundamental problem in tucking rewards behind a skill based minigame that has been made with the idea in mind that improving the skill should merely make it easier to pass rather than block entry altogether - people are curious and people are stubborn.

You see a master locked chest in Skyrim, what do you do? Well, Bethesda hope we'll remember where it was and come back for it later. They also like the idea of us having a go regardless. It will be hard and you'll need lots of luck but the risk is yours to take. And why take that risk? Goodies.

That's the plan. What actually happens is people see the chest, expect it to contain awsome loot that could be crazy overpowered for their level, and realize:

- the world's a huge place and they may forget where the chest was.
- by the time they level lockpicking high enough the reward might not be worth it.
- any lock can be picked, and you'll never run out as long as you can reload a save.

So whether it promotes or encourages it or not, the end result is a whole lot of people breaking pick after pick, reloading time after time and generally not having fun.

Having skill level based access might not be realistic, but it does succeed in pushing players towards bettering their skills rather than spending far too long comletely out of their depth and getting frustrated.

It also ensures some level 1 dude can't sit at a chest for an hour to get a gun you'd usually not see until you're 30, so without this gamebreaking possibility Bethesda can more confidently improve chest contents appropriate to both the level of the lock and the person picking it.

It also raises the importance of the lockpicking and hacking perks. If you can, with patience, unlock anything immediately wouldn't improving those skills always be less important than gaining a brand new ability or becoming better in combat. If you're actively missing lots of loot without the requisite petks you'll typically feel so much better when you unlock them - much more so than an immeasureable small decrease in the difficulty would in any case.

I don't really care about all this I just want to say you have varying difficulties of locks and encryptions in real life, the tier system of difficulty is justified.

I agree with Greed in this respect. They did away with companion death, and they did away with terminal lockouts (yay!) but kept percentage dialogue? I despised that in 3. I much preferred NV's threshold, especially since the dialogue would be different (weak hilarious line if you'd fail, butter-smooth if it works).

Also has led to people repeatedly reloading to blunt-force romance companions after each refusal, which is both amusing and depressing.

Yes. I believe there's a bit of gameplay story segregation going on, unless you like the idea that there's only one mechanical style of padlock throughout the wastes, and that all terminals are running the exact same OS revision and have all the same security exploits.

Of course that's daft There will be many many methods of constructing a lock requiring totally different skills and methods to know how to pick. Ranking up to Hard basically means you can pick locks that are basically just fancy clasps, but now you can open proper padlocks tbat normally require a key. A higher level lock would probably involve bypassing a biometric scanner.

But we only have one interface so that's all we get.

Hacking is easier to explain. We never see what the PC does to initiate hack mode. An early vulnerability will have been patched by Robco, requiring the PC to learn and master increasingly trick and complex ways to bypass the new layers of protection.