While I'm playing this game I'm living in the world and things like this just make it more involved. Sometimes I just get in from work and wanna sit down with a beer and a spliff and craft the settlement of my dreams and chill out.

Key words

I think it's fun to take fallout in this direction, gives you something else to concentrate on in between doing the standard fallout stuff. It also inspires creativeness, I've seen some intricate settlements that people have made. And for those who didn't like this feature, they can still carry on with the game as standard. No harm no foul.

Game never really forces it on you. There are some quests where you're asked to plant some crops or set up some defense, but it never really asks you to build anything elaborate or creative. The most complex thing you're asked to build is a special device for the main quest, and of course all of the generators to power it... I guess I can see how that would be annoying for anyone that doesn't give a damn about settlements, but it's really not so bad.

There is also not just one sort of people who like the settlements. I know there is a host of people who like to build their own grand cities and fortresses. I on the other hand, while I like the settlement building aspect a lot, actually rarely build much. I add room or hut here and there if needed but try an maintain as much of the original as possible. More like extending or improving instead of overhauling. To each their own, and more options in the game means more ways for people to enjoy them. It's not coincidence that this sort of things have been modded to earlier Beth games.

A thing I could wonder is, who can enjoy the power armors of heavy weapons, yet there seems to be rather a lot of people who fancy them. But as much as settlement, no one forces me to use them, apart from the initial introduction to them.

Personally, I like building up 1 settlement, but not 30.

People have been doing this without the tools since Daggerfall, makes sense to appeal to all these people and make it a feature of the game.

Why do people like building with Lego? Build models? Paint miniatures? Garden? Knit? Build cars? Human nature I suppose...

This thread is hilarious, so I will just say that the whole settlement building feature is OPTIONAL, if you don't like it then don't use it anymore than whats asked of you.

I like to go out and explore, kill, loot and haul my goods back to my settlement. From there I can use all the miscellaneous junk I've gathered from scissors to buckets to make a fortress or a simple farming town.

Just go back to your childhood days of forts and tree houses to find your answer.

Does it matter? Just accept lots of us do. Some people prefer Lew Dewitt, some perfer Jimmy Fortune.

I find going around shooting the same ghouls and having the same dialogue options with boring NPCs tedious and annoying, so to each his own.

Settlement building is actually the only main reason im playing the game now, especially since i figured out you can glitch the size limit

City building is an extension of kind of play that is open to you.

You only need to do the minimum needed for a small community anyway for survival. Food, water, beds, defence, basic necessities..... success and points..... give them a trading shop for income.... and parts for the player. A safe base to live as well. Then, pretty well let them get on with it after that.

I kind of regard it as an extension of play of a Fallout game. As is having Chemistry as well, oh yes, if you are into drugs, the game can blow your mind ! ........ all in the interest of depth of play of course. I got a wow useful mix, just out of curiosity, I must explore more.

I think there probably is a lot more depth to be found in this game.

City building games can be great fun..... Pharoah, Queen of the Nile, both with combat aspects, and building pyramids and tombs.

It fits into the Fallout game as an option of play, and combining all options, it actually works well.

Next to solving quests, exploring and having my fun-companions around, I love building settlements and turn them into real Bastions :3

Now, all we need is the ability to create really a bar, a brothel and all that stuff that makes a city/settlement fun.

I hope they also add the ability to restore the skeletons of some bombed down house that were made of brick and concrete. I am not really a fan of that wild-west flavor. Cowboy movies always bored me to death, except they were with Terence Hill and Bud Spencer ^^

Also I would love to see the option to remove corpses from my settlement... I hate it when they stay there and do not vanish.

What I am also missing is cultivating more plants and most of all - herbs / wild flowers.

btw. I never played Sims... just love to watch youtube movies made with them...

Something that hasn't been brought up about the settlement building. It is easy XP.

Sure, it is optional. It can be fun or it can be tedious depending on which settlement you are building up. Regardless, building up some basics (food, water, beds, and especially defense turret here and there) are some easy to grab XP even early in the game. Just doing some basic building around Sanctuary and the Red Rocket Gas Station at the beginning of the game allowed me to easily get to Level 4 and even Level 5 before even setting foot into Concord. Later in the game, as I've gotten better with the building, I can still tweak a settlement here or there or even building up a new one and get at least a level and a half worth of XP. I don't even have that many settlements unlocked either so there is still some more for me to get out of that set up.

That said, I've had a lot of fun building up some of the settlements around some various thematic ideas or structural features. Some of my ideas are a work in progress and I will definitely be coming back to them later in the game.

This might be a really dumb question, but how do you not turn in a settlement quest?

I haven't paid too much attention to it but the usual path for a settlement is; randomly receive a quest, do quest, come back to person who gave you quest, recieve caps and then find you have a settlement you weren't given any indication you'd be receiving.

Two examples are the Boathouse and County Crossing. I found myself saddled with the Boathouse settlement after being asked to clear it of bugs by a settler at Greentop Nursery. I found myself with the County Crossing settlement after helping some guy near the Training Yard mission free a guy who had been kidnapped.

Neither of them gave any indication I'd be receiving a settlement. In these circumstances how do you not turn in the respective quests when not knowing you'd be receiving a settlement?

My wife asks a similar question, except it is just: why do you spend so much time playing games?

Only real answer is: it is fun.

The way it is setup, if you accept and complete the mission, you _are_ going to get control of the Workbench and build zone. But I think you are stretching it to say you are "saddled" with the location.

Just ignore it if you like. When the people there are dying of starvation, being kidnapped and barbecued by Super Mutants, etc., just ignore it. You always have that option.

Or if you are truly misanthropic, just shoot them.

Or if you are somewhat compassionate, but pragmatic, relocate them to a different settlement: keep your eggs in less baskets.

See this is the thing with settlements, they are by far and away the best thing to come into games like these in years for the simple reason that they introduce some humanism into this harsh and violent landscape. You can go through virtually every other first-person type of game out there and never give a damn about anyone but yourself. Bethesda has taken some steps to change that pattern and bring true art to gaming. Sure it is fun to be a Wasteland Badass, but now you get the chance to be a Wasteland Badass who helps people.

Don't want to help people? Well then don't. Just ignore it; and ignore it when you see them suffering.

I loved buiding forts as a kid - back then with pilows and blankets.

Now I'm having fun building my fort in fallout.

Men...men never change!

So true

This, exactly this! I've spend 100's of hours in a game called Rift building dimensions (one dim is called http://imageshack.com/a/img855/3995/dwkv.jpg on the Hailol server http://imageshack.com/a/img840/2320/yjt7.jpg. The break room even has a http://imageshack.com/a/img837/4192/87at.jpg machine. The dim as over 2000 building blocks, every piece you see in the pic is placed by hand) and now, I can build structures in Fallout? That's freakin' brilliant!

The satisfaction is in the planning, the construction and in the final completion. It's a rush to dream something up and then to actually make it a reality. The best part is that you can actually walk around in your own creation.

Last night, I spend most of my time building a structure on Spectacle Island. It's by no means finished and I can't wait to work on it some more.

I've always loved to decorate my homes in TES games, but it's even better when you can build your own structure. People have done some very creative things with settlements. It's creative art in its own way.

The other thing I like about settlements, is that I can play an active part in restoring the wasteland. For me, the Fallout theme has always been about hope, survival and re-building the world.

I just wish the physics for picking up and placing objects were not so god awful awkward. I'd enjoy "decorating" except that it is so frustrating and difficult.

It's even worse to find you've spent forever trying to place a rare lit cigarette carefully on top of an ashtray to find them both stuck halfway through the floor or completely disappeared later on.

Tbh there's alot of things broken with settlements but it's still fun.

Different people enjoy different things?

(also, I'm going to make a guess, and presume that you're not interested in/by Minecraft or any of the other "Minecraftlikes" that have been proliferating the last few years. Or playing with Lego blocks/etc. And that's fine! But lots of people do find that fun..... and they're the folks who the settlement feature is targeted at. The people who'd already been arranging loot on shelves in Oblivion/Fallout3/Skyrim. The people who made & downloaded the Real Time Settler mod for FO3/NV. Etc.)

...and yeah, as people have pointed out, it's reasonably optional. If you want, just make your home base at Red Rocket. Just use some minimum Workshop time to move all the crafting benches you care about into the garage, stick some containers where you'd like them, and put some turrets around the building for "in case of Super Mutant attack" (they show up every so often while I'm crafting weapons). And then ignore the settlement stuff & Preston's radiant quests.

It's actually pretty easy picking up and placing objects while in build mode.

Why is LEGO so popular? Or Minecraft?

Settlement building appeals to the creative spark to customise the gameworld to how you want it to be.
For all the flaws in FO4s settlement building (and there are a few) I find it is one of the most compelling time sinks I've encountered in some time

I'm fed up being the grunt runaround told to go off and make other people powerful. It's time for a change and I'd like to see settlement building expanded on so my character can be their own faction.
Or, if they side with an existing faction to have a buildables from that factions assets including some faction based guards.

I don't mind doing the basics to keep people happy but it's really not my thing.

I could have done without it, but I understand others do enjoy it and they were the target market, not me. Just because I don't enjoy it doesn't mean it's bad or anything. I will just continue to do the bare minimum, and enjoy looking at some of what the very creative people here....with a lot more patience than me...build.