Apparently Bethesdas only skill. But no, that wouldn't eliminate exploration if it was done right - which is what is being asked.

Those.

Indeed. If they wanted to they could even make a FO3 style central map and have a couple off-main area locations to travel to. I just get sick of the extensive downscaling that occurs with the current system, map nodes can fix that and give larger scope at the same time.

Graphics and & animation!!! Beth should follow the Fo3 storyline.

NO! Fallout 3 barely had a storyline and it was pretty linear.

Well they shouldn't follow the same format of the storyline but they should finish up what they started on the east coast instead of just starting a new story and leaving the old one behind for no reason other than to not have to make up canon references to FO3.

Thing is, imo they made the Capital Wasteland rather boring after you've done everything. Games should generally leave questions behind to leave room for a sequel, Fallout 3 did this with the sacrifice by the water purifier, HOW will the wasteland change now? I expected huge and drastical changes... but then they released Broken Steel and answered the questions there instead, that they instead bottled the water and shipped it to various settlements and... that was that, nothing like that the wasteland would thrive and begin to green. BUT the Enclave came back again and were looking for some more fighting, and that's what matters right?

I was thinking more of 8 F3 map sizes...

True, however there's really nothing more that can be done with the Capital Wasteland, Bethesda left no questions unanswered so there's no reason to return to that story. I think the map should be towards the annexed Canada so that the top Northern part of the map would be in a very little area of Canada to see what things are like there, Canadian Enclave-esque government fighting with the Enclave (I know, I know we destroyed them twice now) for control of Canada.

Capital Wasteland?
[censored] that place, I mean continue the story with Lyons Brotherhood, Outcasts, Mutants overrun, Talon's and Enclave remnants.
Like BOS, their origin is back at Lost Hills bunker, yet over the games the BOS have branched out.
Who says these factions and the storyline of FO3 can't branch out to other areas?
Like V87, thanks to the Lone Wanderer Lyons Brotherhood will take that place out, with no more FEV or a home the super mutants will disperse from the area, but in doing so they will flee to other human communities and cause chaos with what little numbers they still have.
The actual "Project Purity" would not make a return, the Enclave Remnants on the other hand will as they try to assimilate into the wastelander society.
So I don't mean that FO4 should continue "Capital Wasteland".
I meant that FO4 should continue to build on lore on the east coast and flesh it out instead of just ditching Eerie Stretch, Ronto, Pitt, Capital Wasteland and the Commonwealth all together and just have FO4 take place in Florida with no connection to FO3 what so ever.
I mean, it is after all a "4" on the end right?

That'd probably not work, but perhaps with the new engine, see, map nodes isn't a bad idea, just need the tech for it.

Yeah, I doubt the next map will be 8 times larger than Fallout 3 even if it isn't a map node system. Maybe 2 or even 2.5 times larger, and that would be gigantic. The only way 8 would happen is if a lot of the in-between wasteland isn't very fleshed out and is mostly just landscape with some spawns. Personally I wouldn't mind it taking a really long time to travel between the more interesting/unique locations (and it would take more effort and reward to find them), but I don't think many people would like that.

Eh. The Dragon Age games use map nodes, and it's kind of dull. I mean, 10 years ago, sure, they had to use map nodes if they wanted a world the size of Fallout 1 or 2, but nowadays there's no excuse for not actually putting some detail into the world.

So.... no. Map nodes in a modern game just reeks of lazy developers.

As seen in both Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 one big map can only hold one real town and even that town has to be scaled down.
Fallout games used to be about the towns and cities, not the random wasteland.
So a map node system is > than a big sandbox map for Fallout games.
Besides, they could use 8 maps that are somewhat bigger than Point Lookout that include some exploration along with the realistically sized settlements, towns and cities.
And outside of these maps there could be tons of hidden locations on the world map which we can only find out about from talking to NPC's or we could have greater chance to find them on our own depending on how high our Survival(Outdoorsman) skill is.
All these maps could have that detail.

And it's not lazy to use map node system, it's done to give the world of the game a greater scope, to show how big it is and that places have realistic distance between each other.

They would more likely try something like that for TES __: Tamriel first.

This.

I hope they don't use the old map system from Fallout 1 and 2. I hated traveling on those maps. Every 5 seconds was a random encounter, you couldn't travel more than a hundred feet before the next random encounter, it became tedious, annoying and frustrating. Even in Fallout 2 when you got the Highwayman to drive around, random encounter every 5 seconds. If I had a car in the wasteland you could rest assured if raiders, or scorpions, or gecko, or whatever else was trying to attack me I wouldn't stop the car for every encounter and say "Let's fight!" I would put the pedal to the metal and blow past them.

Well, NV and FO3 are both worse as they have enemies every 50 meters ([censored] it, with FO3 it's every 20 meters...)
FO1 and FO2 had an encounter like what? A kilometer apart?

Well, this isn't comparing scale, it's comparing how quickly you get encounters. Considering the system is much faster for travel than Fallout 3 or New Vegas, you do get tend to get encounters very often. Maybe not more often than Fallout 3, but certainly more than New Vegas.

Fallout 3 had a lot of random encounters, scorpions or other creatures were everywhere, raiders were everywhere. It doesn't happen quite as often in New Vegas, most of the creatures in New Vegas, always spawn in the same general area and can be avoided. You don't find many random scorpions or other NPC's in a strange place like in FO3. I didn't mind the RE's in FO3, but 1 and 2 was just ridiculous at times.

Put points into Outdoorsman so you can avoid them.

Creation Engine is a good bet unless Beth is designing a new engine specificly for Fallout type games. BGS has a lot to do though besides the engine. A lot of the gameplay in Fallout 3 and New Vegas is broken so they really need to tweak the system.

I hope they make the game a little more optimized than the previous fallouts.

Ha! Me too. I remember spending all my caps on a "wind brahmin" once in NV too.

A bigger map is a must along with much better AI and less freezing when there is a big battle but other than that everything else is a bonus that should be ignored if it interferes with any of the previous.