Yup. There were also a lot of posters saying things like "I've played for ~40, ~30, ~50 hours and there is nothing left to do! I've 'finished' it! This game is a ripoff." Unbelievable.

Probably just trolls but they seemed to be making a lot of noise back through the first month post-release.

I've seen some other users's post similar thoughts. Having pondered it, I think in most cases, they might not "want" to go back, or it might even not be safe or prudent for them to go back. Piper, Cait, MacReady and Hancock come to mind in particular. Danse (at least pre-'revelation') Deacon and some of the others are a bit more iffy.

I think one could conclude that if Piper went back to Diamond City, the Institute might well bump her off, even if you ARE allied with them. They seem to be quite the hydra with agents and robots running around willy-nilly. Cait would likely go back being a junkie, as would Sheffield, so whether they are inclined to do so or not, it makes sense that the PC, once they have been accepted as a follower would at minimum sent them to retire somewhere they were unlikely to fall prey to their old demons.

There are serious issues with crafting. 1 pencil = "1 wood." 1 baseball bat = "4 wood" (might be 2). I am pretty sure 1 "board" = "2 wood."

A pencil weights about 8 grams and a baseball bat weighs at least 880. 880 / 8 = 110 and != (4/1 = 4).

Moreover, one of the cheaper pieces of "shack wall" costs "7 wood and 3 (maybe 2) steel." Making a "wall" out of seven pencils and one or two pistols (which yield one or two "steel") is clearly absurd but you can do it in the game.

So no matter how much we might rationalize some aspects of building, it is a system which is inherently based on a totally inaccurate resource accounting system.

The fact that you can only build architectural styles that are 'local' in time and history is nothing compared to the gigantic inaccuracies in resource accounting.

Easy to mod. It will simply take a one-off script attached to the Kellogg quest state. Once his questline is finished, the script will run and set the "ownership" of the internal cell of his house and the load-door in Diamond City to "Player". Seems like a fair way to do it.

I guess you have to start suspending your disbelief much earlier than you are. (Maybe begin at: "The US automatically gained a full understanding of nuclear technology after WW II, and household items contained radioactive material for power, and car accidents resulted in thermonuclear explosions, but everyone was A-OK with this, and then we fought a war on the moon." I would start there.)

I think the type of "building" you're talking about would be a whole game unto itself. Beth wanted a model that was pick-up-and-go. Spend an hour or so learning the ropes, then dive in and build cool stuff. Populate the world with your designs.

I can see your point but Nick should go back to his job and Piper and Nat should be able to be together.

Agree totally that "bringing Nat" to be with Piper should be an option. It could even be a quest of some sort. Maybe (and one would have to think about how it would play out differently given the state of other quests) after Piper leaves, she gets put under arrest or something and you have to break her out?

Of course, once you've completed one of the endings and either director of the Inst or have destroyed it, there shouldn't be much threat against Piper (at least from the Inst) from being in Diamond City. However, it might be that there are still "Synth partisans" or defectors and those are a potential threat?

With Nick, same thing sort of. I agree him going back to Diamond City is one of the most reasonable prospects which the vanilla game does not provide as an option. I have to say I've found the fact that he is in Diamond City _at all_ to be rather hard to believe. Here we have this city where outright "anti-synth" views are espoused by influential people and common citizens alike, and there is a synth detective living in town? Bit strange to say the least. Once MacDonough is revealed, I would think that the fever pitch of "anti-synth sentiment" in DC would get even hotter, and at that point I think Nick would become even more of a pariah in D.C.

What might have been more satisyfing would have been a few lines of dialogue for all NPCs. Once you have recruited them and when you go to dismiss them, it would open a dialogue in which you say "Well, it is time for us to part ways. I guess you'll be heading back to your home in _Diamond City_/Goodneighbor/etc.?"

At which point the NPC would say "Actually, I'm not sure it is such a good idea for me to go back there . . . {insert character specific details}. Would you mind helping me to find a new place to live?" At which point the menu window with the list of settlements opens up.

Actually, this raises a question for me: what happens if you totally bypass Sanctuary and Red Rocket and go straight to get one of the companions? What happens when you dismiss them then!?

You are lucky if they even go where you tell them to go. Heck I sent Dogmeat to Sanctuary once and I thought he was gone for good, I could not seem to find him anywhere. Then I was in the Third Rail to flirt with Magnolia and there he was in the back room.

Cait and Curie do explicitly comment negatively when you bring them back home (i.e. enter Combat Zone or Vault 81 with them as companion) - Cait a bit more strongly - so they really would rather not be there. MacCready does seem happier in a settlement than being stuck in that bar, while I do find it nicer if Strong wandered around Sanctuary Hills attracting stares rather than sit in hostile territory (not sure if the respawning mutants will be hostile to him, though). Piper does look more at home with her sister in Publick Occurences - the way she lounges on that sofa is so relaxed, and I should try building one in a settlement to see if she sits the same way. She certainly doesn't sit that way in the sofa in Taffington.

I do leave Nick in his agency - makes sense to leave him where he can do the most good among people who adore him. You can send a companion back to their original home if you'd never sent them to a settlement before. If you hit "tab" to cancel the "where do you want to send them?" menu it defaults back to the last place they came from, so if they came from their home, they will return to their home. If you've already sent them to a settlement before then they will go to the last settlement they came from. This also applies even if the companion is currently in their home (whether through your leading them there or through an in-game event such as Piper's).

I hate that my Home Plate is foggy/hazey. LOL

It's like ex-weed-party room.

Plebeinan, the story is set in a fictitious world that only has similarities to our own. We accept that because that is the author's staging and it is common practice in literature to create 'what if' settings that all of Science Fiction and much of fantasy relies upon. However, what I am alluding to is a complete confusion on the part of the designers as to what they want players to imagine. Am I painting my power armor or am I finding plating for power armor that was painted 200 years ago? I am prepared to suspend my disbelief. However, the problem is not with what the players do; it is a schism within Bethesda itself. Those who designed the narrative relied heavily on the fact that the SS had been asleep for 200 years and had missed the trauma of those first few months after the detonations. This is re-enforced when the SS tells Piper with a voice of utter disbelief, "You are living in Rusty Shacks and killing each other" and it makes it very clear that the driving force for the SS is to save what is good in the world, get people out of the rusty shacks, and to progress away from killing each other in safe, defended, clean, disease-free settlements. However, those responsible for the mechanics of the game completely ignored the narrative and had the SS crafting items like blood-soaked bedding that was obviously designed as set dressing with the filth and the gore of 200 year old garbage heaps to invoke a sense of repulsion.

I can accept a world where the time line diverged in the mid-forties and that the popular culture of the 40s and 50s extended through an age where we fully utilized nuclear energy. It is the game's setting. What I cannot accept is that I'd chop down trees and make furniture with broken drawers. "Ooops, I stuffed that one up. Let me make another."

In the end, an incredible opportunity was missed. While it appears obvious that the designers mistakenly believed that game lore would be upheld by crafting 200 year old garbage to fit in with this post-apocalyptic wasteland, it is not, because the story is about the SS and his influence on the factions and the world he discovers. Will he change things or produce the same garbage the settlers wandered through the valley of the shadow of death to escape? I'm disappointed that the SS wasn't given a build menu of completely new materials and I eagerly await mods that will rework the "happiness" system. Settlers should arrive 0% happy and putting them in rusty shacks with access to water, food and some defense should increase this to 10% happiness. Giving them swimming pools, carpeted cottages with terraces overlooking waterfalls - maybe 80%, And, over the coming years, as the creativity of millions of players ends up providing us with competitive artwork the true potential of this game will have been reached. In the meantime, I want my armor to be bright and shiny just like I painted it. I don't want to stand back, look at it and wonder if I'm the Lord of disease and decay.

I like it too but when I did a little more decorating I began to have troubles. I put a typewriter on my desk and when a came back a few days later it was nowhere to be found. I can't put a comfy pillow on my bed because it falls straight through. And either I'm terrible at decorating or it's really hard to position things on the shelves.

I'm sorry, but if I can Science! my way to building mods for lasers, plasma guns, alien tech I've never seen before, build pristine turrets, molecular relay technology, among other things....I should be able to build a functioning drawer.

And I yield my argument above right there. (Somehow, I think most of my post went unread, but I'm totally fine with that because you win this point. Hands-down.)

You are right, in certain sense. (A big and relatively impossible to ignore sense.) But a game like Fallout is about more than than simply "logical sense" to achieve its goal. And that goal is creating a highly stylized and very symbolic portrayal of a satirical vision of the future. Being able to re-create the rust-free, "manufactured products!" type furniture that we see in the pre-war opening would largely invalidate the overall visual cohesion of the game. We both know that there will be mods that incorporate that furniture and clothing into the game almost as soon as the CK is released, so it's kind of moot anyway. But Bethesda likely won't be releasing anything of the sort, and rightfully so. They've developed a (if you'll forgive the irony of the term) "pristine" aesthetic for Fallout 4, and it works wonderfully to allow you to customize your architectural dream while also remaining within the overall visual continuity they've created.

For purists like myself, the system works perfectly well. I wouldn't want my settlements to appear to be something outside of the established world, but rather something that accents it. Hotel-room-clean beds and the straight, modern lines of IKEA furniture would blow the mood.

EDIT: Bro/Bra, this was really good. I'm still laughing. I can sooo appreciate being shot down like that. I owe you the proverbial drink.

Haha, I could use a drink right now. I actually did read your whole post. Apparently I just really wanted my drawers fixed.


I understand about the whole aesthetic of the game and having bright shiny furniture like in the prewar scenes would seem horribly out of place in the wasteland. But I still would kind of like the option to build SOMETHING clean. Even institute themed furniture would be awesome. But, if that isn't on the table for Bethesda ( I know mods, but on console and not holding my breath, even for xbox one), then at least a rustic theme with working drawers. I don't care if it is peeling paint, or weathered wood. You can't tell me I buy a shipment of screws and refuse to use one to fix a funky drawer. Honestly I expected something along the lines of the beds

One looks covered in blood, another pretty clean but still obviously a part of the wasteland. Like the wood walls...oh, those things....ugh. there is what, one, maybe two that don't have holes in them. One that is done nice and clean with full wood boards, but still looks very much apocalyptic in style...and why for craps sake are there no walls with windows? Or junk fences that actually connect. Okay, starting to rant mow. That wasn't really at you. It was for Bethesda...I really need that drink...



EDIT:

I'd settle for something that looked like an 9th grade shop project, instead of what fell off the truck on the way to the dump

That'd be a really crappy drink either way...

The reason windows are generally hard to come by (other than in the Sanctuary houses) is that in an interior cell, windows will have you looking out on cyberville. In exterior walls, there are some windows, but the effect generally ruins the usefulness of the wall as a shelter since it is presumed you can't make glass and not much in the way of panes would survive.

As a kid I lived on a ranch, and we had a log cabin in the front yard that was built in the 1840s for a stagecoach stop. the cabin was interesting, still structurally sound with no wind coming through the walls or rain falling through the roof. It consisted of one large room with a loft, one door and no windows, though there were narrow gunports presumably to fire your rifle through.Think of it... A fine shelter built completely with hand tools over the course of a few months and a hundred and fifty years later, the roof still doesn't leak and the walls still stop 100% of wind, and it came with a fireplace that could still be used. Sometimes I wonder if feral ghouls are the only ones whose brains were jellified... nobody else is very damn smart either.

Great post Plebeian, even if it is a bit of a smokescreen. I can see you are academically trained but mythology obviously wasn't a part of your studies (that's okay, we are all specialized in something). Fallout 4 is mythic - it is the fleshing out of myths held without question by the people living in the 50s. Think "Buck Rogers". The Alien Blaster, the car designs, the radios and stereograms, and the beliefs concerning the potentials of nuclear energy were far from "non-quantifiable" - it is a cultural mythology that actually existed as if Fallout 4 was written in the 40s and 50s as a realistic interpretation of their future.

And while you are right in some instances such as the sudden appearance of barrels of nuclear material scattered over the wasteland when those barrels even back then were dropped in holes and then had concrete poured over them. During the "Great War" they dropped bombs not barrels of nuclear waste, right? And, then there is the time issue. Two hundred years is a long time. Two hundred years ago Napoleon fought his last battle at Waterloo in 1815. True, Napoleon didn't destroy the world but even so, the trauma is over. Subsequent generations have adapted and yet no one has set up settlements to safeguard food and water security or to give raiders an alternative lifestyle. Settlers just turn up and I want to know where they've been for the last 200 years. Where are your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents, your great-great grandparents? I laugh at this but as ridiculous as it is, that's them - that's the game. But don't make me act illogically because I won't stand for it.

The reason why what you have said is a smokescreen is because of the way fiction works to gain our suspended disbelief. The game says that the wasteland is covered in barrels of nuclear waste. The game says that radiation can be chemically removed. The game says that settlers have appeared out of a 200 year vacuum. The game says that radiation rots your brain and turns you into a ghoul. The game says that the SS has some technical expertise and can make things and I can accept whatever setting the game gives me because that is how fiction and reader/viewer/player suspended disbelief works - we accept the world we are immersed in regardless of how outrageous some of it may seem.

But woe unto the author that interprets this acceptance as a license to make the characters or the protagonist/player perform actions that are out of character or not supported by the fictional world. Regardless of how "Off the planet" some of the world staging may be what I do and how I react to that world must be grounded or my immersion flies right out the window. And, while your arguments apply to weapons like the pipe guns that have a distinctive "home made" look they do not apply to gore-soaked bedding, broken drawers, airplane and hangar parts for metal walls and roofs, and faded and scratched paint jobs. These are things that I do and MUST be a realistic response to a fictional game world.

Stunning quote. Eloquent, to the point and vivid... love it.

I disagree with this point because arguing over the presumptions of game realism would be a losing exercise. I am able to build a teleporting device and use someone else's brain goo to see their memories. Since I'm collecting glass I don't think glass window panes are a huge stretch.

I really do think this highlights a core issue. If your character had grown up in the wasteland, accepting and adapting to all that surrounded him or her, what you say would make sense. But he/she has not adapted to the filth and decay of this world and he/she doesn't want to "accent" anything in the established world. He/She tells Piper without any confusion that he is disturbed by the fact that Diamond City is nothing to be proud of and that they are still "living in rusty shacks and killing each other." For him "modern lines of IKEA furniture" or its 1950s equivalent is not just normal it is where the entire world needs to go.

The whole idea of water purifiers are to help the SS create his/her vision of providing safe food and water along with barricaded defenses and clean, rust and disease free accommodation. Or, are we to believe that after voicing his/her disgust to Piper, he/she then sets about putting settlers back into the same rusty, filthy buildings we must presume they ran from? There is more than enough rubble, filth and gore to maintain the post-apocalyptic theme - it certainly doesn't need the player to add to it and given the small amount of space reserved for the player's "look for a new world" I think this world can use a touch of IKEA.

Heh, well, maybe so, but next time you go to build a wall in a settlement, just try to put a glass window pane in it. i said it is presumed you cannot make glass window panes, but I didn't mean that's MY presumption... I meant it's Bethesda's because they gave you no way to place a glass window in anything. The Fallout world is full of such inconsistencies. Bethesda has implemented it's own sense of "realism" and that is the reality our characters live in whether it makes sense or not... at least until some modder creates a new reality.

True, Neildarkstar, BUT, I don't have a problem with Bethesda's sense of realism - they can present the world they want to present. However, Bethesda's writers may have a problem with Bethesda's graphics and programming departments. The writers seem to believe that the SS wants to go out and mend the world and end the scavenging survivalist mentality by providing the people with facilities so that they won't have to live in "rusty shacks" as was made clear in the dialogue. Apparently, the programmers and graphics people never got the memo and provided the SS with a build menu more suited to a raider or Super Mutant. So my confusion stems from theirs - they don't even know what the realism is supposed to be. As for the glass windows, we aren't there yet. Before this discussion even takes place I have to wonder how, why, and wtf, in regards to buying shipments of steel and melting down screwdrivers to make an aircraft wing piece when my intention was to make a metal roof. So what is it? I only have plans for making aircraft but lack the plans or knowledge to make a flat piece of steel without holes or rust?

Maybe if a mod appeared that let us build Vault furniture in Vault 111 or something after cleaning it up - I think that wouldn't break the immersion, and would still give us the chance to build something cleaner. I mean, just unlocking Vault furniture would be great, and if people want to mix-and-mash their settlements then let them. I know I, for one, would ensure that the clean stuff stayed with the clean stuff and the ruined stuff stays with the ruined stuff, but only being able to build ruined stuff is annoying, especially when I can see better stuff elsewhere in the FO4 world.

It's a bit tangential to the discussion, but it occurs to me that one person is going to have huge gaps in knowledge. For instance, I am very good at survival type skills. I can hunt, fish, build fire and shelter from very few materials, and survive harsh conditions in high altitudes, but...

I just learned how concrete is made a couple of days ago, and believe me, the SS is not likely to have the ability to do it. As to steel, I only know how to use it, not how to make it, even though I once had a job in a place called "Marshfield Steel". I operated a huge steel press, but I have no clue about the niceties of refining scrap metal or creating either aircraft wings or a metal roof. I know how resistors, transformers, and capacitors work, but I couldn't tell you where to begin to make any of those things.

How about you... Do you know how to create what's needed to make a circuit board, the right temperature to melt steel, how to make concrete, how to make bricks and mortar, how to build an electrical generator and on and on...?

This!


Especially if I become director of the Institute. I want my settlements to reflect that. Or at least some of them. I gained all this tech, we announced our presence to the surface world, basically told them we will change life in the wasteland, and....still have them in drafty shacks, when we basically have an unlimited amount of free labor Gen 1/2, or slave labor Gen 3.

As far as Windows go, I wouldn't expect glass windows in a shack. It's just when I build up a structure I want something with something to shoot out of on the upper levels, besides a crappy hole in my wall. I know there are a couple wall pieces that you can build that do this, but I want a flat wall with a gun port, I don't want to keep building overhangs sticking out of the sides of my structures.

The game can't be realistic enough to do all the building in real time, nor do I want it to be, but when I'm in the workshop interface and building stuff, I see it as a gameplay representation of multiple things going on. While my character might not specifically know how to build a concrete foundation, there is probably a settler or two who does, and if it's a populated settlement, they are all working together to get the new building constructed. Me as the player is just using the workshop interface to make that happen. My character may have also checked in with building experts at Diamond City or perhaps Goodneighbor, or got more information and help from Trashcan Carla and other traveling caravans. Even though it all seems instant when we build something, in my mind it's not. It's just that that part of the game could get really tedious if we had to play out those scenarios every time we wanted to put in a new wall or floor.

For building nicer things that have no gaping holes in roofs or walls, or even having windows, surely there are people in the Wasteland who know how to do these things and could be consulted for help. And it's really not that difficult at all to put clean sheets on a bed, especially if a settlement can set up a water purifier. It's not like I don't find a good amount of soap in practically every location I explore either.

First, even if there is a settler who knows how to build a concrete foundation, that doesn't mean he can make concrete... and under the circumstances, making concrete would be next to impossible. Just crushing the rock would be a tremendous obstacle. Building experts at Diamond City? What building experts?

Other than ghouls, there wouldn't have been building experts around for a hundred years or more... One has to presume that setting up a water purifier is either not that big a deal, or there are working components available. I can make you a fair water purifier in about an hour, and what I'll need is three five gallon buckets, four gallons of gravel, four gallons of sand, and four gallons of activated charcoal.... If you want a pump attached to that so you don't have to pour the water through it, it's going to cost extra...