Since release I've spent a lot of time on this board listening to the various pros and cons (all passionately argued) and compared it to what I saw in game. And at the end of it I went with the Minutemen for one reason:

I just want to be left alone.

What the other three factions all have in common is that they each have an agenda they want to impose on everyone else. And they're all willing, even eager, to use violence to impose it. No real thought is given to the normal people who just want to live in the commonwealth and not be bothered with their synths, nuclear bombs and giant robots.

So I wiped them all out. Hopefully they got the message that the Commonwealth will not be their playground or their battlefield. And if they want to come back I've got plenty of ammo left.

As an "out of time" refugee from the past, it certainly can be hard to work up the motivation to side with one of these newfangled factions and their goals, especially when YOUR sole goal turns out to be unachievable.

It's basically two games: first, you have your mission.... then after that does not pan out the way you hope, you have to decide what to do with the ~rest~ of your life. And the factions that are all new to you don't often make a compelling argument to someone new to the Wasteland. The Minutemen, at least, seem to have the most realistic, achievable goal: survive and try to return civilization. Not technology, per se, but ~civil~ - ization.... people taking care of each other.