This really is the most stable Fallout/TES games I've played in a long time. I haven't had a single CTD once and I'm 295 hours into the game.

But I have had A LOT of bugs that required a save/load to fix. Clipping issues, texture load issues, NPC scripting going crazy, etc... Without the ability to save/load whenever I wanted to fix those bugs, I would have been far more pissed off about this game. I may have played through it a few times now, but those bugs would really ruin a "survival" playthrough for me.

I don't really see how this would make the game any more difficult, to be honest.


So I sleep and save. Then go out and try to run a dungeon. I die and revert to my last save (when I last slept in this case.)


What killed me that first time is still as difficult - no more or less. The challenge in this case lies in that specific encounter. In a Bethesda game, most of what I did before that encounter is probably dialog and searching rooms.


Having to go back and do those dialogs again or find that loot again isn't where the difficulty was in the first place. It's not like Castlevania or something where the entire sequence up to that death was difficult and continues to be so.


In this case I'm just retracing my steps. I think if you want to make death more signifcant, there's far better approaches more appropriate to this sort of game.


I mean, I play X-Com on Ironman, but that's mostly to keep me honest - and failure is an integral part of that game design. I am supposed to lose a few missions in that game. (Plus that mode autosaves every turn - you just can't use it to save scum.)


I'm not against the mechanic on its own, I just think you need the right feature for the right game.


I'd really rather to see stat debuffs or some sort of penalty for death. What if dying didn't give you a game over screen, but instead gave you a scar or crippled limb, stat penalty or something permanent?


So you die, and sort of hover at deaths door instead - waiting for a companion or good samaritan to save you. You then don't reload at death, you just have to keep going with the effects of that death?

yes, grow a pair or go home

What benefit is gained by locking saving to sleep? How does that enhance gameplay? As you put it, all it means is going back and retracing your steps. Playing through an area that you've defeated, dialogue trees that you've already passed. At that point, it's a time sink. And it's a time sink that won't change the experience.

In XCOM, there's a heavy random aspect to the game in terms of what levels are created, where enemies spawn, what enemies spawn and even where they move and take cover when they appear. It's a tactical game and in a way just a really complicated puzzle. That failure, as you put it, is an actual part of that game's design. Failing once doesn't end the game or ruin the experience. Instead it provides another challenge to surpass.

Fallout 4 isn't designed with that in mind. If you fail in Fallout 4, you die, game over. Nothing's gained and nothing changes. Instead you just try again. You retread the same paths, you kill the same enemies who follow the same tactics. The [censored] raider with the Fat Man will always fire it at you the moment he sees you. So the only difference is how to approach the challenge. Do you load a save and then try another path, or try to stealth your way in, or maybe see what happens if you charge in rather than trying to snipe from a distance. At that point, what's the difference between loading a save you made 5 min before you found that enemy and 40 minutes ago when you had the character sleep last? In that scenario the difference is 35 minutes of wasted time. And if you get killed a second time, you're even more discouraged to try again because that will mean another 35 minutes lost if you fail a third time.

IMO: a survival mode should add to the game's experience while remaining in they style of the game. So adding hunger, thirst, dehydration, disease and other factors that limit "survival" is really in line with that idea. So would doing things like adding weight to ammo, or perhaps locking the RNG for dialogue options so you can't save-spam dialogue options until you succeed that difficult speech option. Other options might be to adjust harshly the barter system so caps are more valuable and you can't make a ton of money off of reselling armor and weapons. Or to reduce the spawn rates on stimpacks and ammo, making them rarer and forcing players to really think about each fight ahead of time.

I think Bethesda Game Studios is making save on sleep only for this Survival Mode because like a few people said already to prevent you from saving every five minutes.

Some people asked that they wanted this. Now that it might happen I'm very happy and getting excited for Fallout 4 once more.

As I first played Fallout 3 I totally missed the stimpacks (don't ask how this happend). So I was completly dependend on finding beds to sleep for healing (I hated the food too). It was a interesting experience to have to find the useable beds (FO3 has actually a lot less then FO4). You can still savescum (it wouldn't be a proper Fallout game without savescumming ) sure but at least you have to put a bit of effort into it.

I think the idea is to add a little tension to play. It is sort of like dead is dead lite. Being able to save and reload at will removes any real risk from gameplay and allows you to simply ratchet your way through the game. Creating a situation where a slip-up actually imposes a cost or a penalty, even if just an hours worth of play time, adds little tension and makes those close calls a little more exhilarating.

It's not to everyone's tastes, but it won't be a big problem. The fact is, we don't have to play it. Even if we do play it, we will ultimately be able to customize it to our own preferences. If feature choice isn't available in vanilla, mods ... which everyone will get this time around ... will enable you to pick and choose. I guarantee that if survival mode only has saves on sleep within 24 hours of it's release there will be a 'save anytime in survival mode' mod on the nexus. Consoles will have to wait another couple months, but this will be true for them too.

I understand what you are saying. What I am saying is that there is a lot more to a Bethesda game that can screw up your progress besides the behemoth you didn't know was there. I can get stuck on the environment, any number of crashes could happen, the baby could wake up and by the time their fed and put back to sleep it's midnight and I need to go to sleep because, you know, work. Now I have to spend another fifteen minutes walking to a bed (because fast travel was also cut) or lose the last hour of gameplay. None of the above are because I couldn't handle consequences.


Why does this even need to be a feature? Just disable auto save and those that want it so bad can wait until they find a bed and go to sleep to save while others can save Willi nilly.


Even better since those rabid for this don't apparently have the self control to do it now give the survival mode toggles to turn on or off. Drink water, you eat food, yup, sleep, yup, diseases, yup, save while sleeping, nope. There now we're both happy.

Yeah it's true there are a lot of problems that can mess up your playtime playing a Bethesda Game Studios developed video game, but people are asking that they want this, so Bethesda Game Studios is giving it to them.

I'm very happy Bethesda Game Studios is listening a lot more to our feedback.

Love the idea. I want survival mode too feel like a completely different experience from other difficulties. Fact is if you don't want to deal with it there are other difficulties you can play on, but survival mode should be hard as F.

Then I guess I need to change the default time scale, because if I can no longer go out exploring for hours without risking losing my progress because of a crash, then my own immersion is broken a hell of a lot more than it would be by pressing the F5 button and not having to worry about losing my progress when the game crashes. That was just an example. With the default time scale we'd have to sleep roughly once every hour of game play, to mirror a somewhat realistic sleep pattern. I'm all for that. What I'm not all for is losing that hour of progress because my game decided to crash.

Like I've said several times, I just hope that they make this optional. If you want to use it, then by all means go ahead. However, there's a good chance that this would prevent me from using it. It has nothing to do with challenge. I've been playing on Survival for my last 400 hours or so and I've died maybe 3 times in that entire period. This game is not hard. Only being able to save when sleeping isn't going to magically turn this into a challenging game.

It is probably their most stable game release ever, but saying "this is the most stable Bethesda game ever" is like saying "this is the biggest chihuahua ever". Sure, it's bigger than other chihuahuas, but it's still not that big. I don't have crashes every hour or two. In my 600 or so hours I've had about a dozen CTDs, and I've also had three quests that have bugged out and required me to jump back to a save prior to starting the quest.

Like I already said, it has nothing to do with challenge. It has to do with not wanting to retrace hours of game play because of buggy software. I don't want them to remove this. I want them to make it optional. Then EVERYONE gets it the way they want, instead of just the totally hardcoe people who have been lucky enough to not experience a bunch of crashes with this game. This is a game. It's not real life. Games are about enjoyment, and this would detract from the enjoyment of the game for many people, and not for game play reasons.

This, point is to increase the penalty of dying by making it harder to save.

And it will be an optional feature.

Stability of FO4 is very individual, i have had 1-2 crashes.


No I'm unlikely to use this because of I like to save before dialogues, hard save before important ones.

Personally, I support it. I think it adds a new element to the game, and no one is forcing anyone to use hard-core mode.

Is that like saying if you want slower healing its optional? I.e. You have to play survival, and get everything that entails to simply get stimpacks/food to not be insanely fast acting? Because honestly thats the feeling I get from Beth. That they will lump all these changes into one box.

Maybe they could make each feature of survival mode an option, but in the end, how much work are they expected to do to please everyone? Let them build it the way they want. It's not going to please everyone, just like Fallout 4 didn't please everyone. I like their idea for hardcoe mode and, to me, it's the best one yet. If they can patch out some of the bugs, I don't see an issue. It's going to make the game hard and unique, and I like that.

So if they changed it to allow quicksaves and only roll back to sleep saves upon death then it would work for the buggy game and your IRL playtime then, as it still makes death a penalty.

No, absolutely not, 75 votes.

If the game were more stable and less prone to CTDs, then I'd be all for a "sleep to save" mode. But it's not, and as such, the additional challenge/benefits this mode would introduce would be overshadowed by the heightened frustration of having to unnecessarily redo a portion of a given gaming session because the game crashed.

There are two very prominent reasons for why this is a terrible idea. I can't think of a single solution to either of them.

1. A game this big and dynamic is prone to crashes and glitches (naturally). Add in mods, and the risk grows that the player could lose hours of progress for something that is entirely not their fault. You could say 'don't use mods then'. Firstly, the game has crashes without mods, and secondly, no. Mods are a huge part of the game (for many/most PC players, anyway).

2. It severely limits when the game can be played, and for how long it can be played. Want to play an hour before work? Nope, because there's no telling that you'll be able to get to a bed by the time you need to leave. It's the same thing I've experienced with Total War games in the past; I can only play them when I know I've got hours to kill, because the battles can't be saved halfway through (this was back in the older games, where battles could last up to an hour). A single player game should allow you to save and switch off whenever you want (within reason).

These are nothing to do with difficulty, they're to do with usability. People don't want to avoid repeating an hour of dungeon crawling and looting because its hard; they want to avoid it because it's dull the second time around (and third. And fourth). Games aren't supposed to be dull. If we die, let us skip the easy stuff we've just done, there's nothing to gain from having to do it all over again. At least keep auto-saves anyway, so we've got something to fall back on.

If this is going to be the case, I'm sure mods will sort it out, either by re-enabling saves, or implementing the other survival features into the regular game.

OMG that would be fun!

... .... .... ...

It's no longer fun...

People keep bringing up the Crashes to Desktop (CTD's), but aren't looking that some people asked for this.

Bethesda Game Studios and Todd Howard are giving this Survival Mode to the people who asked for it.

How about:

1. You sleep in a random bed.

2. You get killed.

3. No reload, just fade to black and moved back to that same bed.

4. You do get a permanent injury though

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think the survival mode is going to be great. It's exactly what I wanted, and every other feature sounds brilliant to me. But the non-saving feature is impractical and simply won't work for the above mentioned reasons. Once it gets modded out (he said, with high hopes), I'll be more than happy with it.

People also ask for multiplayer. And if I look hard enough I am sure I could find a post or two wanting micro transactions for weapon skins and the like. Point being, just because folks want it, doesn't mean its a good idea for a fallout game.

THIRTY YEARS of trying to beat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5WbTEbO-Qw

and if it's the last thing that i'll do.

and no, i won't use a trainer.

like i see it, there's just 2 places in the game where you can't sleep within a 2 minutes walk:

the glowing sea and under water.

agreed on that one.

though i got the impression they've done stg about this already:

in the early days, i got a LOT of the "orange colored sky" type (i was just walking along, minding my business......... wham

these partly really came out of nowhere, just walking down some random country road, no combat, no detectable hostiles, and boom. i literally never knew what even hit me on these (though i blamed most on the bos and their targeting capabilities

- of these, i only had ONE in the past few weeks, and i survived it with ~1% health -

might be more due to my high level etc, but might also be something already got fixed there.

and let's hope they totally exclude "unfair" deaths like that in the actual survival mode.

for my own part, there's just 1 thing that heavily speaks against bed only saves, which is the dreaded dialogue wheel of doom.

i don't see how i can satisfyingly conclude a dialogue without EITHER knowing what i'm going to say OR being able to reload. won't matter to much now since i've played already and got an idea what's going to happen, but for a first playthrough, this vs. dialogue wheel would pose a real problem for me