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[JacobVR]

Bethesda, for god's sake, get a new engine 

[umiman]

Bethesda, for god's sake, get a new engine 

Alright, I'll get right on it.

[Damiac]

I am really upset with bethesda over the rollout of the new survival mode.

They overwrote the old survival difficulty instead of making a new one.  Why? I cannot imagine why they would do this, because some people are actually playing on survival difficulty already, suddenly they get a mandatory patch that changes that difficulty completely.  There is just no reasonable purpose to this. The new survival is a new difficulty, why on earth wouldn't you make it a new, separate thing?

They wrote the code for all these cool new survival features, then said "And if you want to use them, you have to play ultra hard mode, and play beddy bye time every time you see a bed.  Why the hell wouldn't they make them options.  They already have fucking checkboxes to disable autosave, quicksave, etc.  It's already there, all they had to do was enable it, and they didn't, because they want to force people to play it their way?!?

Of course, I just installed the super easy to use save anywhere mod, and now when I have to do something in real life, I don't have to go bed hunting or lose lots of progress.  But why on earth should I have to install a mod to do this? The feedback forums showed the entire time the beta was going on a large majority wanted these features.  Most people didn't want to play sleepy time simulator, and some people did.  Checkboxes have existed for longer than I have, they aren't hard...

It's just baffling how bethesda can create a cool new feature, start a beta, asking for feedback, get tons of feedback over a couple issues, and completely ignore it.  Were they just paying attention to the couple people repeatedly saying "Nah, nobody really cares, just git good"? 

I mean... I'm enjoying the new mode, because luckily people are willing to fix their incredibly stupid oversights in their spare time for free.  But... why? It's just so mind numbingly stupid...

[ZebioLizard2]

Yes the way all the stats have been replaced with a perk cheat feels way too simplistic for those of us with RPG backgrounds.

I like the system they went with in FO4 because it allows the player to make meaningful crunch-side choices in character development instead of giving them the appearance of the same, and I don't feel particularly obliged to qualify it as "I know it's not really an RPG, buuuut..."

Let's look at a couple classic RPGs and their sets of stats and skills:

Did any of those games have actual changes in gameplay or story if you had different skills like in Fallout? Could you get out of combat with Locke's stats by talking down encounters or using your pokemon's stats to talk N or Giovanni down? Different RPGs matter for different blokes, what matters is that the changes to Fallout 4 were something that people thought made it worse as a result because they just turned skillpoints into perk points instead and made skills matter even less towards actually changing or doing anything in the environment like you could before. Far less skill checks for using explosives or talking people down and ended up making nearly everything need to be killed to matter.

Different people have different idea's what classic RPGs are. Some prefer that PnP style RPGs are the true classic rather then something more modern like FF6, doesn't make anything less valid to me.

[MarcAFK]

Not entirely sure what the game engine can handle, but once I have the G.E.C.K, fallout rocket program is a go.

[XhAPPYSLApX]

I made a mod for the game, basically adds some traits from all the Fallout games to one of the only ones that doesn't have them, you can get it here: https://mods.bethesda.net/#en/workshop/fallout4/mod-detail/810593

Tell me what you think of em if you download it

[Flying Dice]

Yes the way all the stats have been replaced with a perk cheat feels way too simplistic for those of us with RPG backgrounds.

I like the system they went with in FO4 because it allows the player to make meaningful crunch-side choices in character development instead of giving them the appearance of the same, and I don't feel particularly obliged to qualify it as "I know it's not really an RPG, buuuut..."

Let's look at a couple classic RPGs and their sets of stats and skills:

Did any of those games have actual changes in gameplay or story if you had different skills like in Fallout? Could you get out of combat with Locke's stats by talking down encounters or using your pokemon's stats to talk N or Giovanni down? Different RPGs matter for different blokes, what matters is that the changes to Fallout 4 were something that people thought made it worse as a result because they just turned skillpoints into perk points instead and made skills matter even less towards actually changing or doing anything in the environment like you could before. Far less skill checks for using explosives or talking people down and ended up making nearly everything need to be killed to matter.

Different people have different idea's what classic RPGs are. Some prefer that PnP style RPGs are the true classic rather then something more modern like FF6, doesn't make anything less valid to me.

One would assume that a discussion about RPGs in the thread for a RPG video game would default to video game RPGs when someone says "RPG". Or are we talking about LARP RPGs instead? It's also sort of funny that you're talking about classic tabletop RPGs as if they were bastions of player choice and meaningful skill selection rather than wargames modified to orient around single characters instead of armies, with a handful of good choices and a bunch of shit ones, and no viable approach to most situations beyond combat, both because of the system and because of how GMs typically set things up. And then you talk in the same breath about talking down encounters. 

And let's be honest, the skills in FO3 were no more meaningful. The only difference is the incrementation, instead of single-digit percentage changes to damage and healing you've got fewer double-digit percentage changes to damage and healing. You're also ignoring the fact that a lot of the ability scores and their respective feats allow for gameplay options that simply didn't exist, and the flattening of their value means that there's less of an optimal build path and more "choose what you want".

As long as Bethesda is sticking with the combat RPG approach, this sort of system is better. Skill-heavy systems work primarily for RPGs which don't have the capacity to account for types of player skill beyond ability to min-max.

Actually, I'm curious. What classic RPG video games are you thinking of when you talk about ones with a bunch of skills where choosing your point allocations actually matters? Because there's a fundamental disconnect between "a shitload of different things to increase" and "impactful choices"-the more options you have, and the higher the granularity of those options, the lower the impact of any single decision. And when a game is like FO3/NV/4 and the meaningful changes only occur at milestone levels, there's no reason to even bother with that sort of granularity, since points allocated between milestones are functionally irrelevant. Nobody actually thinks, "Gee, those five points in Energy Weapons sure are making a difference! And the four points in Lockpicking that got me to 73 are definitely coming in handy," because the changes range from incredibly small to nonexistent.

It's different for RPGs that don't operate on player skill, because a 3% difference in damage is something you'll actually notice in practice, because it's the only change or improvement you'll see.

--

it begins

[ZebioLizard2]

It's also sort of funny that you're talking about classic tabletop RPGs as if they were bastions of player choice and meaningful skill selection rather than wargames modified to orient around single characters instead of armies, with a handful of good choices and a bunch of shit ones, and no viable approach to most situations beyond combat, both because of the system and because of how GMs typically set things up. And then you talk in the same breath about talking down encounters.

I don't know what sort of GM's you play with, but there tends to be quite a few ways of getting around combat so long as the GM actually knows what he's doing, rather then just setting up combat after combat.. Not to mention it sounds like you are basing your ideals of such on just DnD, when there's a large expansive market that's been around from the same age.

Actually, I'm curious. What classic RPG video games are you thinking of when you talk about ones with a bunch of skills where choosing your point allocations actually matters? Because there's a fundamental disconnect between "a shitload of different things to increase" and "impactful choices"-the more options you have, and the higher the granularity of those options, the lower the impact of any single decision. And when a game is like FO3/NV/4 and the meaningful changes only occur at milestone levels, there's no reason to even bother with that sort of granularity, since points allocated between milestones are functionally irrelevant. Nobody actually thinks, "Gee, those five points in Energy Weapons sure are making a difference! And the four points in Lockpicking that got me to 73 are definitely coming in handy," because the changes range from incredibly small to nonexistent.

Aside from the finicky nature of some skills (Yeah not gonna argue that some skills requiring 25 is a bit daft), it sounds like you've missed my point when it came to the stats because I wasn't talking about the combat part of the skills at all. Fallout 4 removed many of the skill based checks that I enjoyed in the previous fallout, such as the ability to recruit a character from the former game (Cass) required a few. Such as bartering with her to pay her off, speech to convince her to come with you, or deal with her in an endurance contest with whisky as each ability required various strengths because the options made it easier or harder based on the situation at hand.

I don't know if it was a problem with the voiced dialogue but it seemed like much of my charisma checks ended up just getting me more caps then anything else, along with the fact that it seemed you were default good no matter the situation with very few moments of being able to choose for yourself. Of course it might not have been a problem with the system in place, but the bad writing of it does tend to make one's view of a new thing poorer.

Maybe the system will be superior later and with Fallout 4 it's just a poor showing, and come the first real expansions we will see that one can do much better with the system in place, at least that's my hope.

[Krevsin]

I don't think that's really a problem inherent in the system itself but more a function of how the game is designed. I see no reason why the system in place could not have skill/stat checks in place.

[BFEL]

I don't think that's really a problem inherent in the system itself but more a function of how the game is designed. I see no reason why the system in place could not have skill/stat checks in place.

This is a thing I said earlier.

I SAID IT FIRST SO I GET CREDIT FOR THE IDEA!

[Krevsin]

That is a thing that has been said by pretty much everyone who's given some thought to how annoyingly limited the speech checks are in this game (and who did not subsequently devolve into a frothing pile of rage over how shitty modern RPGs are), so you can't take credit for that particular idea, BFEL 

[Teneb]

(and who did not subsequently devolve into a frothing pile of rage over how shitty modern RPGs are)

Oh boy. Are we doing this? Dude Person of indeterminate gender, what about Dark Souls? Or Witcher? The new Shadowrun games?

[Glloyd]

Krev was making fun of people who try to start shit because of that, not trying to start shit. At least, that's the way I interpreted it.

[Rolan7]

@Teneb
I don't think Krevsin was claiming a complete lack of good RPGs
But that's a good point.  Fallout 4 is barely a RPG compared to Dark Souls or the Witcher.

And FlyingDice, I think you overestimate how important the optimal route was in other Fallouts.  They didn't demand optimal play.  Whereas Fallout 4 doesn't offer alternatives.  I feel like I could beat Fallout 4 without applying perks at all, because every perk has been incredibly disappointing.  Especially if you allow me the "Bonus damage to the weapon type you use!" perks, which are absurdly unimaginative.  And if you allow the crafting perks, it's a no brainer - every other perk is crap.  Seriously.

[GiglameshDespair]

Especially if you allow me the "Bonus damage to the weapon type you use!" perks, which are absurdly unimaginative.

Certainly the original fallouts never had such tripe!