Right, there's no possible way that someone could have hacked their way into a building (just like we do in the game) and then locked the door behind them after leaving (just like we often can in the game). That's clearly just unreasonable. It's even more unreasonable to suspect that they intended to return and for one reason or another never managed to make it back. Clearly this is all impossible in a nuclear wasteland. Doors have a "use once and destroy" locking mechanism now apparently.

I don't know about you, but I lock my door when I leave. I've got an expensive computer and an expensive stereo. I don't want it getting stolen. I imagine people in the wasteland wouldn't want to have their power armor stolen, so locking the door seems rather...obvious.

And seriously, there is really no need to be slinging insults at me. It's a video game. Relax.

Raven Rock had the ability to produce APA, and the Enclave made many suits of it there.

That's entirely unneeded.

oh so you live in a post-apocalypse, lock your door along with all the hostile robots and feral ghouls and radiation still inside with your food and water right? Totally viable, not absurdly child-levels of smart at all

I think there is two issues here:

1. Presence of X-01 necessarily must be interpreted as "Bethesda broke the lore." I don't think this is the case. It has been 200 years since F01 (or was it FO2 where we learn of Enclave? anyway . . .) there are literally a thousand different explanations for how a technology that was developed 200 years ago and several thousand miles away (yes, even across a wasteland continent) might wind up in Natick, MA, sitting in some military installation.

Agree, the implication seems to b that many of those locations have sat idle since the day the bombs fell, but maybe that is a false assumption. Maybe the Enclave (or a nascent element of them, or an offshoot, or someone who stole their tech) was still operating in some of those installations a few decades after the Enclave developed the tech and that is why the suit 'could' be there.

You do not have to like any of these explanations, I don't like them myself. But in the absence of authoritative proof that these locations have definitely sat locked up and sealed since the day the bombs fell, you cannot fully discount such explanations. Its called "leaving it vague."

Bethesda might have been "sloppy" here but I don't think it reflects "arrogance" or a desire to poop on the lore. There are too many possible and unfalsified explanations for how these things might have wound up there in ways that would not breach the lore . . . to say nothing of the idea that the Enclave were just wrong/lying.

2. But then we have the second issue, and that is the 'random' or 'semi-random' spawning of these things depending on level. I confirmed it. Those guys are right, there is an element of random. This to me is the bigger 'breach' and I now see that it is tied with a related complaint that I've been cogitating on for some time and that is the way the random loot system works in general.

It makes absolutely no sense that a blood bug or a mole rat has a "legendary shot gun" or some other large heavy metal object "in it." What the hell, did it swallow it!?

They should patch the game so that legendary items do not spawn on smaller critters. I suppose Death claw _might_ conceivably swallow a whole chest plate or shotgun, but that still seems a bit unlikely.

The randomly spawning level-based power armor is obviously a related mechanic and I disagree with it. It had me fooled, and at LEAST the damn things do not respawn after you take on from a location (or morph into a higher tier one if you find it, leave it and come back), but now that I see how it is really working, I have to say I do not like it, especially for something as special as X-01 is intended to be.

I agree with Jaramr said up above: a quest with an Enclave hold out would've been much better. Is it really necessary or "good design" to have multiple suits in one play through!?

Could you clarify that? I can't quite decipher your meaning here.

I think we should just agree that it's not lore-friendly and that it's just here for giggles, I think people will just understand that. It's already been noted, the claims are there, and it can't really be refuted until someone retcons and states "Oh the Enclave rain PA down later on because screw you, that's why" or w/e.

no

this is better than any other "explanation" anyone has come up with. A single note or terminal mentioning the Enclave's presence at some point would have been more than enough for me and would have been extremely easy for Beth to do...until the inclusion of such a thing however I will use your approach to ease my annoyance with Bethesda

I'm not suggesting that someone was just walking along through the wasteland, found an empty building, left their power armor there, and walked away. I'm suggesting that someone who somehow acquired this technology after the bombs fell could conceivably have made their way to the east coast, and could conceivably have been holed up in this location for some length of time. They needed to make a supply run, but they didn't want to burn up a fusion core. They didn't want to bring their entire stockpile of clothing, guns, ammo, etc. with them because doing so simply wouldn't have made sense. In their absence, they wanted to do what they could to lessen the likelihood of being robbed, so they locked the door on the way out. While out on their supply run, they got into a hostile engagement, and never made it back. I find it really hard to believe that anyone could suggest that this scenario is just completely unrealistic. This seems quite possible to me. Again, I'm not claiming this to be absolute truth of what definitely did occur. I'm offering it as a potential solution as to how this could be possible.

Well, thanks for that then. Sorry for being unable to decipher your disjointed run-on sentence.

Seriously, why are you getting so hostile about this? You seem to be taking this INCREDIBLY personally. Like your entire life is going to be impacted by the outcome of this discussion on the internet about a video game. Relax. Seriously. This is not that big of a deal.

well excuse me for not bowing down and accepting whatever garbage Beth wants to put on my plate, I am so sorry that I value logic and fact and want perfectly great story and lore to make even a tiny bit of sense

I think it would have been better that way, but then I am about 90% positive that Bethesda also had that exact same idea and logiced their way through it to deciding that the way it is now is better.

People seem to think that Bethesda just sticks things all willy nilly into the game, without thinking very hard about how it effects not just the lore but the gameplay side of things. If that Enclave Holdout quest was in the game, what about for people doing a second playthrough metagaming their way to getting high level items? That was some of the feedback they got for Fallout 3, with items like A3-21s plasma rifle being so powerful and so easy to obtain with prior knowledge that it made a lot of the progression of the game worthless if you wanted to game the system, which some types of players will always do.

And that's just what jumps right into my mind for having problems with my proposed Enclave Holdout quest in the game. There could be all sorts of other things that detract from that idea, and with a game with so many eyes on it for so long I think that many of the things people talk about here have been heavily considered long before the game was announced.

You are excused.

fallout 2 was set in 2241, it was fallout 2 we were learn of the enclave (FO1 was the master and his army)

fallout 4 2287

46 years difference not 200, its been 200 years since the end of the world nuclear holocaust (210 to be prcise)

I think it would have been best if the APA wasn't part of the randomized loot system, but restricted to only being acquired at an abandoned Enclave base or from the BoS. I got my first suit of APA in the Big Dig, and that made zero sense.

There was a suit of APA that could be found in a fixed location in Fallout New Vegas. They balanced it by making that location the Deathclaw Promontory, one of the most dangerous places in the game. Any low level character who makes it out of there with the suit in-hand has earned it.

and the helmet was in a cave with the Legendary Cazadore, also a scary obstacle

Well, answering an extreme scenario with an extreme response isn't the way to go about it if you ask me. Majority of people don't meta game, and I myself never used Plasma guns, so a3-21, despite being OP, hardly ever saw use.

Anyways, they probably read how much people disliked the presence of the Enclave in Fallout 3 and how there was an attitude of "no more Enclave, give us something new" going about. They should not have shied away though, it doesn't hurt to make passing references to the Enclave. They did have a nation-wide presence, so it's totally ok to have a base or two filled with Enclave tech.

It is also balanced out that we needed training to use PA. Would have been great for Bethesda to have a person in the Brotherhood when you aren't wearing PA to say something a long the lines of "you will need to learn how to use it" and we could say something a long the lines of learning how to use it during the War. "Before you were born" type of remark.

But then again PA training is just a mechanic that was in Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

I have a serious question. Why bother having an issue with the X-01 power armor? I mean, there are tons of things I have issue with (but would not voice honestly). I mean, seriously, the fact that we can paint power armor, yet can't slap the MM or BoS insignia on every suit of power armor, Vertibirds at the start of the game, T-60 even existing and the BoS using it as their sole suit of power armor, to name a few.

What about being able to "upgrade" suits of PA. Basically saying we can make from scratch using stuff we find around the wasteland our own suits of PA. Highly advanced PA at that.

Crafting has become the focus for Bethesda. So we are heading into we can do anything territory.

Yeah, this irks me as well. So the pinnacle of Enclave defense after decades of work was the Advanced Power Armor Mk. 2, and yet we, a pre-war soldier/lawyer with a talent for low-level jury-rigging, can suddenly upgrade a suit to be 3 tiers higher than theirs?

Oh heck yeah, my bad.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline

Great War--2077

FO1--2161

FO2--2241 = we "learn" of the Enclave and this "APA" (which may or may not be the same thing as "X-01" but is at least somehow related)

FO3--2277

FONV--2281

FO4--2287

So wait a minute . . . the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/X-01_power_armor (which largely seems to repeat stuff said in in game load screens or other documents in game) says

What I'm understanding now is that, this X-01 is NOT the same tech as is presented in FO2, which is called "Advanced Power Armor" and which we are led to believe is 'the most advanced armor ever.'

It is vague, but one could conclude from the quote "specially engineered and employed by remnants of the U.S. military after the Great War, and offers increased protection over the older, pre-war models," that the X-01 actually PRE-DATES the "APA" by some 150 years!

What does the in game material in FO2 say about the "Advanced Power Armor?" Does it say it was recently developed by the Enclave?

If that is the case, then it seems to me the simplest conclusion to reach is that the "APA" is an offshoot of the X-01 which actually pre-dated it by many decades. Enclave scouts might have come upon fragments of some X-01 suits, and been able to engineer their own "APA" model.

Eh, not that big of a thing for me, sine I do not really use power armor that much. The painting, yet not being able to paint anything on any suit is more if an issue than the upgrade system.

And we haven't even got to the DLC yet. Make your own Vertbirds! What about your own Zeppelin?

I messed around with PA a lot but not so much painting them. So I could be wrong... but I do seem to recall being able to paint various logos on it.