Settlement construction really is not good

Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 6:06 pm

Not to add to the unwarranted negativity here, because I do think it's a great game overall, but the settlement construction really is f'ing horrible.

Nothing snaps together easily, nor does anything snap together the way you would intuitively expect it to. Half the time I have to deconstruct 75% what I've built just to fit a single piece into place. Currently I'm wrangling with the fact that I can't put a wood wall corner down if there's a 1x1 wood floor kitty-corner from it, which makes NO sense -- and that's only the most recent issue I've had.

There's no ability to lay out interior walls and have them snap into place. You're seemingly forced to use the prefab rooms and corridors, or else go to ridiculous lengths to "game" the system by laying out the interior spaces at the same time you're laying down the floor.

Apparently there's TWO of every corner, because Bethesda had the bright idea to make certain walls and set-pieces geometrically non-superimposable -- the upshot of which is if you don't use the CORRECT corner, the geometry on the corner pieces doesn't line up correctly with the neighboring walls. A well-designed system would be smart enough to figure out which corner geometry is appropriate and select it automatically, but this arduous finiggling has seemingly been pushed onto the player. Awful programming.

Certain models don't line up no matter what you do. For example, try putting down a wooden floor. Then, right next to it, put down a Structures>Wood>Floors shack stairwell. Finally put down a Structures>Wood>Floors shack foundation off the second story landing, directly above the original floor. Come to find the poles of your lovely veranda are now hovering a foot off the wooden platform. What the hell?

On my occasions, as I've laid out a building, I get the darn thing 80% built only to realize the foundation isn't high enough and as a result, a bunch of animated weeds are sticking up through the ground floor. Maybe it would have been a good idea to NOT HAVE SIX FOOT TALL ANIMATED WEEDS in settlement locations? Or maybe the game could have been made in such a way so as not to render weeds that are indoors? Or maybe those weeds could AT LEAST have been disable-able by console commands? No such luck here, becuase they're "non AV objects," whatever the heck that means. What's worse, there's no way to just lift the construction and all of its attached parts wholesale, which means you have to manually elevate the entire structure piece by piece. Ridiculously time-consuming and not fun at all.

In fact, it seems like NONE of the existing buildings can be disabled through the console in this game, so tough luck if you don't like that eyesore of a shack Bethesda was nice enough to plop down on your settlement tract for you.

If you're constructing a tall vertical building, you're forced to lay down a wall, then a floor, then another wall, then another floor, etc. Which would be fine, except that for some reason the floors are visible from outside the structure. So no matter what you do, the side of your building ends up looking like layers of a damn cake with thin licks of frosting in-between them.

There's a depressing lack of variety in the setpieces they give us. At least they gave us two building styles, wood and metal. But seriously... two? There are so many more options they could have put into the game. What about Vault-style set pieces? Or what about Cabot House-style setpieces -- You know, something that actually looks decent? Something that doesn't look like it's out of a refugee village? Places like that exist in the Fallout universe. Why can't we build something like that if we want to?

Concrete and wooden foundations don't snap together vertically. In a word... WHY? I mean, six feet of the foundation is ALREADY being put toward raising the ground floor above the swaying weeds -- and that means if I'm building along a marginally-steep hillside, this block of concrete is bound to fall short of what I need to interface with the ground. The end result is, the concrete foundation ends up floating above the ground like a... well, like a badly-designed video game setpiece. Which wouldn't be so bad if you could just STACK THEM ON TOP OF EACH OTHER -- but no, that's too much to ask from this awful, awful settlement system.

Those are all the complaints I've managed to come up with based on my ~10 hours trying to wrap my head around this system. I don't doubt that it's possible to build some amazing stuff with this system, but holy hell, the user experience with this is just mind blowingly bad, to the point where I can't believe this even made it out of QA. This would have been so freaking amazing if Bethesda had only made it work.

As I've played, I've been continually reminded of Todd Howard at E3 when he described the system. The mantra he repeated over and over again: "It just works."

What a load of baloney.

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Ryan Lutz
 
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Post » Mon Nov 30, 2015 5:32 am

I understand your frustrations. Due to the way it's implemented, it feels like a mod that was added rather then something built from ground up. Did bethesda recruit a modder to implement this?

If so, then I'm amazed how this could be done. And yea it needs alot more work and I look forward to a more refined version in the next elder scrolls title.

For now I just treat it as a fun diversion.
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Tiff Clark
 
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Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 7:14 pm

I've had very little problem creating some pretty awesome structures. Like anything, it takes some work to figure out the dos and don'ts of it but it's not a fail to me. I'm in the process of creating a prison right now

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Claire Mclaughlin
 
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Post » Mon Nov 30, 2015 2:48 am

I've worked around the issues and made amazing settlements. Think of it as a puzzle. I would rather have it than not have it.

It needs fixes asap but in the mean time it is still fun.
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Hussnein Amin
 
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Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 3:13 pm

The story to the game makes it entertaining, and the settlement stuff seems to be missing some background. The "idea" probably comes from previous popular fallout games mods that intended to rebuild destroyed towns by raiders, but as background story to Fallout 4 "why do the character have to build settlements?", that's really no go, because in a post-apocalyptic world with his family and home destroyed, he'll most likely go drunk, find the nearest highway and bar himself up there with some brahmin, crops and rainwater only to scope targets below for fun target practise and just leave it all behind on the highway. But the character HAS to build settlements and why would some one trying to survive do that? Because when for example a person is hungry, it doesn't matter how civilised his upbringing is, his instincts will automatically steal and fight for it

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danni Marchant
 
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Post » Mon Nov 30, 2015 6:30 am

The easiest fix would be give us a 3rd person view when building like in minecraft. IT would solve most of the issues. Also I agree with the weeds thing, not sure why you cant just pull them up like you can other ones. I love the building overall but it does need work.

What they need to do is let us manual resize the foundations, walls and floors so we can make them fit. You could easily make the resizing by hitting diagonal , then if you are snapping them together die the option to keep the same size as the one next to it.

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Laura Mclean
 
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Post » Mon Nov 30, 2015 12:54 am

The settlement building UI svcks on toast. I've ranted about it elsewhere but if I had to choose one thing to castigate Bethesda for, it would be that. Absolutely horrific.

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Taylor Bakos
 
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Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 8:48 pm

The building materials do svck... Beat up wood with holes in the walls and roof.. Their premade shacks are often worse, sometimes quite a bit better.. (Red rocket).. Its amazing how modders can do a better job than the devs with our numbers and no time or budget constraints. I just use the houses left over and the settlers are happy with it... I'm not happy with the building materials so I avoid building.
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kelly thomson
 
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Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 8:08 pm

I have not tried it yet but I read on some site somewhere if you want a 90 degree corner place the ceiling 1st before you place the wall said it worked great. But i do agree the building needs work

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Taylor Thompson
 
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Post » Mon Nov 30, 2015 2:35 am

It works fine. However, it does need some additional subcategories to divide and group the specific elements that match each other but not other elements of the same class.

You have to learn HOW it works, though.

It's interesting that people complain about modern games being too hand-holding but then when offered a modest complex puzzle-like system they complain about that. Developers can't win, evidently.

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Jade Barnes-Mackey
 
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Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 3:37 pm

Why are there no showers? dirty wastelanders are gross.

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clelia vega
 
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Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 6:33 pm

It's wonky as hell but it's good when it works, I had a lot of fun making my little hermit room in red rocket.

lol, fighting clunky and unexplained game mechanics are now considered puzzles? Taking "It's not a bug it's a feature" to a whole new level.

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jeremey wisor
 
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Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 9:09 pm

Sorry, but there's a huge difference between "hand holding" and fighting with a clunky, kludgy UI with almost no instructions, forcing players to waste a ton of time fiddling around to figure out how to make it work.

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Eoh
 
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Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 5:28 pm

Yeah, its extremely unintuitive and seems like a last minute feature that tacked on as an afterthought. I'm still trying to figure out how to make my bedrooms have their own separate doorways, because...ya know...there isn't an indoor wall with a door way that I can find

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Gavin boyce
 
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Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 10:07 pm

LOL. Don't deconstruct. Just store in workshop then reuse. I found out after wasting a bunch of resources. I like to use watch towers then use a metal wall, attach a roof, add a machine gun tourette, then remove the roof so the tourette is just hanging on the top of the wall... repeat. The walls snap in place. BTW I love being able to build my house 3 stories above the ground and being able to remove the stairs so no enemy can get to me... and no one can bother me especially the trigger happy black dude with the slow laser rifle. Lvl 18 PS4

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Nathan Maughan
 
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Post » Mon Nov 30, 2015 3:29 am

In all fairness to the OP and other people who have a hard time using this feature, it's supposed to be a tool to empower your creativity and imagination. There's no puzzle aspect to it.

I think I understand what you're saying though -- people should learn some workarounds rather than rejecting the entire thing.

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sarah
 
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Post » Sun Nov 29, 2015 6:12 pm

It works fine for me. Very intuitive for me, but I play on PC - I have heard it is harder on consoles?

But it is interesting how players complain about it that: or 1. that it was added at all and that it takes lonely survival feel or 2. that it is not sophiisticated tool that would be the main feature, so you can do anything with that like in a building game that has nothing else in it...

It just shows that none of that was intended ?

It looks to me like just a simple addon extending the story about Minutemen. It is not the part of the main story (so it can be completely missed and you can go to a bar if you want to) and it is not the main feature in the game. It works fine as it is= simple and limited, so why [censored] about everything that was added to make the game more variable and thus fun for players? It is just feature of 1. faction...

People complain that is has only 1 way of the main quest, but if they make something variable on the way, they complain that it is not made to be the main feature of the game? Just make your mind finaly? Or did certain type of players decide they will just complain about anything?

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Neko Jenny
 
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