What ever works for you, man. Decidedly underdone design is not relieving my stress,

Sure, everything can be viewed two ways. But here, while the other one is probably asking for too much, the other is just excusing halfassed design.

The poll is awfully wrong.

The question is not if player A or player B want his companions immortal, but why the hell the develloppers should force immortality on players that don't want it, considering how utterly easy it is to have an option to toggle on/off ?

There is no excuse for not allowing player to choose for something so easy to turn on/off.

If it would be forced thing, i would say no immortality, but it shouldn't forced in the first place.

PS: And considering they use the very same engine every single time, they would only have to code the thing once and apply it for every subsequent games.

Indeed, sometimes develloppers should also consider that their games should also be good for experienced players, not only first-timers casuals. Several game modes are essential to take into account the several various amount of experience that is pretty varying in the overall playerbase. Some need to be baby-sitted while others can't stand it, especially after several playthroughs...

I would just like to have less suicidal companions, like in fallout 2. Alcually i have given up on companions in fallout 3 and i don't think that beth is going to make them smarter in fallout 4, so it wont realy matter to me because i am not going to use them anyway. Instead i wish there to be maids or personal slaves in this game that you can boss around and that will take kare of your stuff when you are away on a mission.

Yes, in normal mode. No in hardcoe mode (assuming if they do add hardcoe mode).

Well... Your dog companion in Fallout 4 can literally take-down human-enemies now. (You know, pouncing onto them. Pinning them to the ground and biting at their neck).

~Edit~

I would considered that as a smarter AI move.

Scrapping something that isn't perfect due to technology isn't the way to go about things. I would prefer to see improvements on the design, not outright removal.

I always thought that was simply a death animation the dog could do, similar to how the Deathclaw in that gameplay footage picked up the player character.

Companions should not die.. I like the Dragon Age way of doing things.. Fall down if health is 1 or 0 and don't get up until the fight is over.. Then with injuries that need treating.. Health pot.. DA: 1 had bandages too iirc..But NO permanent dying.

-edit- clarity

This, but make it a choice for people wanting it in hardcoe/realism mode along with dead is dead.

When every NPC is hopelessly outgunned by every wandering critter like in Fallout 3's end game it's a neccessity to have companions be immortal, or else they're really just a liability. Try getting Clover or Butch to follow you anywhere for any length of time and watch them die when 3 albino radscorpions jump you from nowhere.

The problem comes from those albinos radscorpion, not because companions weren't immortal.

You don't solve a problem by doing nothing about it and create another problem somewhere else that will somehow work in combination with the first problem.

Nope, I'd prefer if Iron Man playthrough was possible. Otherwise they should probably make the player character immortal as well since the player reloads after death anyway, right?

Wrong developer, mate.

Regardless, I don't trust any friendly NPC to win any fight unless they're Essential. Either companions are immoral or I'll have to babysit them 24/7.

what about npcs such as fawkes in fallout 3? he was a pretty tough guy

There's few things worse than babysitting immoral companions. Out all night getting drunk, carousing with their hoodlum buddies, getting thrown into jail. It's not worth it, I tell you.

If you took of his suit.... would it kill him?

*for anyone who doesn't get it, I was making a reference to the conversations between the CIA guy and Bane in the batman movie*

>Start
>Options
>Gameplay
>Companion Death
>On/Off

I did. It wasn't all that hardcoe, but trying to keep Veronica alive was a little infuriating at times. I could be wrong, but I never found a way to give her antivenom, so cazador stings meant burning through about 10 stim packs. Not to mention usually leaving her behind whenever I entered a building.

But yeah, just make it an option.

I have no problem with companions being immortal, as the overwhelming majority of RPGs I have ever played have had it that way.

Most RPGs have companions only get knocked out when their hp reaches zero, or they "die", but can be resurrected at one of the conveniently located temples in every half-way important town.

Its probably even more needed in games like Bethesda's, where the fully 3d world with actual physics can cause problems like how Skyrim's companion NPCs would often get knocked through walls my some forms of dungeon traps. If they could die, that would be the end of it, but since they are immortal, they eventually just respawn when you leave the dungeon or w/e.

Tell me about it; the choir is here. Though I don't think technology is really an issue here; it's rather the design (AI, the companions themselves, the genereal flow and functionality of combat and the minute to minute situations that get them killed, etc). But that's not the point of contention. I was answering to the claims that because the companions will be [censored] up in some manner that they need constant babysitting and are thus a constant cause of frustration and grief, they need to be immortal so that the player doesn't need to care. That's not a fix to the issue itself (which is bad design for the companions), that's building over the problem. And if the problem is unfixable (what ever reason that might be), or if there's no willingness to really fix it, it shouldn't be done as a problem in the first place.

Player stress and frustration, is subjective. I don't see why keeping that level of a casual friendly system for people who can work around it benifits anyone. It shouldnt be made strictly for a certain generalized playstyle in mind, it should be flexible enough to appropriate the consequences of both styles depending on how the player treats them. If the player just relies on them then thats their problem.

I've played games with more realistic systems that dont make companions more important than the player. The response timer in Gears of War and Saints Row for downed companions seem to hold the better middle ground. The companion dies on your call, but you can get skills to increase their health or the timer you get before they die.

A blend of this would be great. a GoW down timer mixed with something like the buddy system from Far Cry 2. Speaking of which, that was probably one of the coolest things about Far Cry 2, how friendly mercenaries could come to your aid when you dropped to 0 health. It was a "last chance" sort of deal. Another good implementation would be the companion being medi-vacced upon KO (or if they use a GoW system - when the timer runs out) to the nearest friendly town you have established, or a general civilian hub like Diamond City. You'd essentially have to wait a few days for them to fully heal up, then you can find them at a hospital and link up again.

Should make this feature as option to player, not only companion, but all neutral NPC.

The main reason I don't like to have companion with me is friendly fire.

I'd prefer if they were immortal to the point that if they drop they stay down until you revive them. If you don't have a high enough medical skill ( or whatever replaces it in FO4 ) and probably something like a doctor's bag then yes they'll stay down forever.

I thought Wasteland 2 did a pretty good job of the levels of being hurt and reviving characters from impending death. They should impelemt a system somewhat like that.